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4 9 


















For the Children’s Hour 


By Stuart Nye Hutchison 


For the Children s Hour 

More Five-Minute Sermons 
12mo, cloth, net $1.00 

Dr. Hutchison holds an unerring clue to the 
child-min^. There is nothing difficult or pe¬ 
dantic here, nothing foolish. What there is, 
represents the efforts of a gifted and experienced 
pastor, who quite obviously, has thought long 
and deeply on the problem of how best to reach 
and stimulate the lambs of his flock. 

The Soul of a Child 

Five-minute Sermons to Children 
Cloth, net $1.00 

Here is a volume of talks to children well 
worth while; the talks are really to children and 
not simply so-called. The author has the gift 
of being able to select a really interesting theme, 
of treating it befittingly and has, moreover, that 
rare faculty of knowing when and where to 
leave off in the matter of application. 






For the Children’s Hour 

i 

More Five-Minute Sermons 


By 

STUART NYE HUTCHISON, D.D. 

Pastor First Presbyterian Church, 

Norfolk, Va. 



New York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 












Copyright, 1918, by 

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 




New York : 158 Fifth Avenue 

Chicago : 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London : 21 Paternoster Square 

Edinburgh : 75 Princes Street 


DEC 28 1918 

©&A5U8731 


TO THE CHILDREN OF MY HOME 
AND THE CHILDREN EVERYWHERE 
WHO HAVE HELPED ME TO A CLEARER KNOWLEDGE 
OF THE TRUTH 

I DEDICATE THIS LITTLE VOLUME 


IN LOVE AND HOPE 



' F> - 



Contents 

I. The Children’s Crusade .. 9 

II. The Man in the Moon. 13 

III. The Little Girl who Made Herself 

Good-looking. 16 

IV. The Horse that was Afraid of His 

Shadow. 20 

V. Doing Our Best . 23 

VI. A Little Bit Late. 27 

VII. A Child Christian. 31 

VIII. Words that Fit. 35 

IX. The Bush That Burned and Burned 

and Wouldn’t Burn Up. 39 

X. Little Foxes . 43 

XI. Our Prayers. 47 

XII. Perseverance . 50 

XIII. How to Pray . 53 

XIV. The Eagle ’s Nest. 56 

XV. Imitators. 59 

XVI. What God Sees . 63 

XVII. Soars.. 66 

XVIII. How to Make Hard Things Easy ... 70 

XIX. God’s Care . 73 

XX. The Giant Ferryman. 76 

XXI. The Tide . 80 

XXII. The Stone Face. 83 

XXIII. Digging for Treasure. 86 

XXIV. Messengers.. • • 89 

XXV. What It Costs to be Stingy . 93 

XXVI. A Tattle-tale . 97 

7 



























8 Contents 

XXVIL “IForgot”. 100 

XXVIII. The Rainbow . 103 

XXIX. God’s Love fob the Birds and Ani¬ 

mals . 107 

XXX. Killed with Kindness . Ill 

XXXI. Looking Where we are Going. 114 

XXXII. Hopefulness. 117 

XXXIII. Afraid of Lions. 120 

XXXIV. The Boy who Thought that He 

Knew More Than His Father .... 123 

XXXV. Good News. 127 

XXXVI. Joseph . 130 

XXXVII. Joseph . 134 

XXXVIII. Happiness . 138 

XXXIX. The Poor in Spirit .... 141 

XL. The Mourners.144 

XLI. Meekness. 148 

XLII. Seeking the Best Things. 152 

XLIII. Be Merciful. 156 

XLIV. Clean Thoughts. 160 

XLV. Peacemakers . 163 

XLVI. Persecuted for Doing Good. 166 

XLVII. God’s Day. 169 

XLVIII. The Red, White and Blue. 174 

XLIX. Christmas Gifts . 178 

L. The Coming to Jesus . 182 

LI. Forget-me-nots. 180 

LII. The Man who Didn’t Keep His 

Promise to Himself . 189 




























I 


The Children’s Crusade 

“And they returned again to Jerusalem with joy; for 
the Lord had made them to rejoice over their 
enemies.”— 2 Chron. xx. 27. 

It was good news that came to us a while 
ago that the British armies had captured the 
city of Jerusalem. It could have been taken 
weeks before, but the British commander 
did not use his cannon for fear of destroy¬ 
ing some of the sacred places about the won¬ 
derful old city. When the British army 
finally took the city that great and good 
man, General Allenby, left his horse outside 
and marched in on foot. He did not think 
himself worthy to ride in triumph into the 
city through whose streets Jesus had once 
walked. 

It is the first time for many centuries that 
a Christian ruler has been in power in Jeru¬ 
salem. Nearly thirteen hundred years ago 
the city was taken by the Arabs, and during 
all those years, with the exception of a little 
while, it has been in the possession of the 
Moslems. It has always seemed sad that the 
city where Jesus worked, and preached, and 
where He died on the cross, should have been 
9 


10 For the Children’s Hour 


so long in the hands of people who did not 
love and honor Him. But at last a great 
Christian government controls Jerusalem. 

Many brave efforts have been made in the 
last fifteen hundred years to take the city 
away from the Mohammedans. Seven or 
eight hundred years ago there were vast 
armies of men called Crusaders, who 
marched across Europe from England, and 
France, and Germany. They went to Pales¬ 
tine and tried to drive out the Turks and 
make Jerusalem a Christian city. They 
were, very brave and more than once they 
took the city, but the Turks always came 
back, and at last they had to give it up. 

One of the saddest and strangest events of 
all history was the Children’s Crusade. 
About seven hundred years ago the children 
of Germany and France thought that they 
could go and rescue Jerusalem from the 
Turks. 

They had been told that when they came 
to the Mediterranean Sea the waters would 
part, as the Red Sea did before the children 
of Israel, and that all they would have to do 
would be to walk over to Palestine on dry 
ground. They believed that when they ar¬ 
rived at Jerusalem they could march about 
the city seven times, as Joshua did at Jeri¬ 
cho, and the walls would fall down flat, and 
the city would be taken. 


The Children’s Crusade 


11 


The trouble was it did not turn out that 
Way at all. There were thirty thousand of 
these children from France, led by a boy 
named Stephen, and forty thousand from 
Germany, led by a boy named Nicholas. 
They marched south and tried to cross the 
Alps in the middle of winter, and thousands 
of them perished with cold and hunger. 
There were thousands more who dropped 
along the way from fatigue and disease. 
Only a few ever reached the shores of the 
Mediterranean, and they were captured and 
sold into slavery. It was one of the saddest 
things that has ever happened. 

Now, what is it about Jerusalem that 
makes the whole world love it? It isn’t be¬ 
cause it is the finest city in the world. There 
are many cities here in America that are 
much finer and bigger than Jerusalem. It 
is because Jesus died there that we love 
Jerusalem. We love that city because we 
love Him, and we love Him because He is the 
friend of every boy and girl. 

There was a boy who had met with a bad 
accident and had lost his right hand. He 
felt so badly over it that he did not want to 
see anyone. His father said, “Pm going to 
bring the minister in to talk to you.” The 
boy said, “I don’t want to see him.” But the 
father brought him in. When the boy looked 
up he saw that the minister had no right 


12 


For the Children’s Hour 


arm. Where the arm ought to have been 
there was an empty sleeve. He came over to 
the boy and said, “I haven’t any hand either. 
I lost mine when I was a boy and I know 
how it feels.” It wasn’t hard for the boy to 
get acquainted with the minister, for he 
“knew how it felt.” 

That is what makes the whole world love 
Jesus. He has suffered for us and He 
knows how to sympathize with us. 


II 


The Man in the Moon 

“Love envieth not.”—1 Corinthians xiii. 4 . 

Have you ever seen the man in the moon? 
If you haven’t, the next time the moon is 
full go and look at it, and you will see down 
in one corner of it what looks like a man’s 
face. Those black ridges you see on the sur¬ 
face of the moon are really mountains, but 
when you look at them in a certain way they 
look like the face of a man. 

There are many strange stories about this 
man in the moon. The Italians used to say 
that the man in the moon is Cain, who 
killed his brother, Abel. God punished him 
by making him a wanderer in the earth, 
without any home or friends, and when he 
died He made him go and live there in the 
moon. There are no other people in the 
moon, and if Cain couldn’t get along with 
other folks he had better go and live by him¬ 
self. So poor Cain has to live, they say, al¬ 
ways by himself in the moon. But some¬ 
times he is very lonely, and then he comes 
and looks out to see if he can see someone 
else. 

I know that every time you see that man 
in the moon you are going to think about 
13 


14 


For the Children’s Hour 


poor old Cain, so I am going to tell you 
about him to-day. 

Cain and Abel were the first little boys 
that ever were. Your fathers and mothers 
have so many people and so many things to 
think about that very often they do not have 
much time to give to you. But then there 
were no other people on the earth, so that 
Adam and Eve could spend as much time as 
they wanted to with their little boys. 

Adam had a fine farm, and when the boys 
grew older he taught them to help him with 
the work. Cain looked after the farm and 
Abel took care of the sheep. Cain was a 
very jealous sort of a boy. Now and then 
we see a boy like him nowadays. If some 
other boy gets a better mark at school, or a 
bigger piece of pie at dinner, or wins a game 
on the playground, he is very angry and 
jealous. There are some children that never 
have any fun at all. They are so jealous 
that it spoils everything. That was the 
trouble with Cain. He thought to himself, 
“Father is putting all the hard work on 
me. I have to plow, and sow, and reap, and 
do all the rough labor about this farm, and 
all that Abel has to do is to sit on a rock 
under a nice shade-tree and watch a few 
sheep all day.” 

The more Cain thought about it the more 
angry he became. Jealousy is a very danger- 


The Man in the Moon 


15 


ous thing. It spoils our dispositions and 
makes us do mean and contemptible things. 

Adam and Eve tried to teach Cain and 
Abel to honor the Lord. The first and best 
of everything that they had was to be given 
to Him. Abel went to the flock and picked 
out the finest little lamb that he had and 
gave that to the Lord. Cain went to his gar¬ 
den and took some vegetables and fruit and 
offered them to God. The Lord accepted 
Abel’s gift. He wants our best. But He 
would not accept Cain’s. He does not care 
for anything but the very best. 

This made Cain more angry and jealous 
than ever. Abel was always getting the best 
of everything, first, from his father and 
mother, and now from the Lord. It made 
him so furious that he killed his brother. 

After that, the Bible tells us, he heard a 
voice that said, “Where is Abel, thy broth¬ 
er?” He ran away from home to get away 
from the voice, but it followed him wherever 
he traveled. And so he became a wanderer 
in the earth. 

We think that jealousy is a very small 
thing sometimes, and that a little will not 
hurt. But it always leads us to sin and 
trouble. So whenever you find the least 
sign of it in your heart, stamp it out. Re¬ 
member the words of my text this morning, 
“Love envieth not.” 


Ill 


The Little Girl Who Made Her¬ 
self Good-Looking 

t( Favor is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman 
that feareth the Lord, she shall be 
praised.”— Proverbs xxxi. 30. 

Sometime ago there were three little girls 
quarreling, and what do you think they were 
having all that trouble about? It is bad 
enough to quarrel about anything, but this 
dispute they were having was about the 
strangest I ever heard of. They were having 
a fuss about which was the ugliest. One 
little girl told another that she was the ugli¬ 
est child she had ever seen, and the other 
little girl said she was not, that somebody 
else was the ugliest. 

Almost every little girl thinks a great deal 
about her looks. Boys don’t usually care 
much about how they look till they are a lit¬ 
tle older, and then they think about it, too. 

There is a little Scotch fairy story, about 
good looks that I think we all ought to hear. 

Once, long ago, there were two little prin¬ 
cesses in Scotland. Their names were Rose 
and Marion. Rose was very beautiful and 
16 


Making Herself Good-Looking 17j 

Marion was very ugly. Poor Marion hated 
Rose because everyone praised her and loved 
her. She was so unhappy that she became 
unkind and unpleasant to everyone about 
her. 

Not very far from the castle was a deep 
grotto, in which the queen of the fairies 
lived. Someone told Marion that Rose had 
fallen asleep there one day and the fairy 
queen had dipped her in a lovely fountain, 
and that was what had made her so beauti¬ 
ful. 

Every time Marion looked into the mirror 
and saw how homely she was she thought 
about that fountain, and at last she made up 
her mind that she would try to be beautiful 
too. When no one was looking one day she 
went to the grotto, and lay down there on 
the grass and fell asleep. When she woke 
up she was in a beautiful hall, full of all 
kinds of lovely flowers, and gorgeous things. 
There before her on a lovely throne was the 
queen of the fairies. Marion said to her 
with trembling voice, “Will you please make 
me as handsome as my sister Rose?” 

“I will do as you ask,” said the queen, “if 
you will do as I ask. I want you to go home, 
and for one week you must not say one un¬ 
kind word to your sister or anyone else. 
When you have done that come back and see 
me again.” 


18 For the Children’s Hour 


Marion went home very happy. She did 
not find it easy to be kind to her sister, but 
she wanted to be beautiful so much that she 
succeeded, and at the end of the week she 
went back to the grotto. 

She went to sleep and again she was in the 
magic hall before the queen. “Have you 
done as I told you?” said the queen. 

“I have,” answered Marion. 

“Then follow me,” said the queen, and she 
took Marion and showed her some of the 
wonders of fairyland. Then she said, “Now, 
you must go back, and for one month try to 
do kind deeds, and see how happy you can 
make other people.” 

So she went home, and for one month she 
did everything she could to make the world 
better. She was kind to Rose, and everyone 
saw that some great change had come over 
her. 

At the end of that month she went again 
to the grotto to see the queen of the fairies. 
She asked Marion if she had done as she 
asked. She said, “Yes.” “Now,” she said, 
“you must go home and for one whole year 
you must think nothing but good thoughts. 
And you must do it, not because you want to 
be beautiful, but because it is right.” This 
was the hardest thing the queen had asked. 
Marion tried it three times, and each time 
she failed, but at last she succeeded. Then 


Making Herself Good-Looking 19 

she went back to the grotto. There was the 
queen, and with her all the faries. “Now,” 
said the queen, “look mto that mirror.” She 
looked and she was even more beautiful than 
her sister Rose. She had made herself good- 
looking by learning to be good, and to do 
good, and to think only the things that are 
lovely. 

There are some people who think that the 
way to make themselves pretty is to put on 
fine clothes and new hats, and lots of paint 
and powder, but those things will not make 
anyone beautiful. The way to be good-look¬ 
ing is to take care of the heart, and the face 
will take care of itself. 


IV 


The Horse That Was Afraid of 
His Shadow 

tl Looking unto Jesus. ”— Hebrews xii. 2. 

The historian, Plutarch, in his “Life of 
Alexander the Great,” tells a very interest¬ 
ing story of a horse. 

Philip, king of Macedon, the father of Al¬ 
exander, once bought a beautiful horse. 
This horse’s name was “Bucephalus.” “Bu¬ 
cephalus” is a Greek name, and it means 
“bull-headed.” They called him by this 
name because he was as strong and wild as 
a bull. The king had paid thirteen talents 
for him, which would be about twelve thou¬ 
sand dollars of our money, so you see he was 
a very valuable horse. The great trouble 
was that no man could be found who could 
tame him. He was so wild and vicious that 
they could not get on his back. 

At last King Philip became displeased and 
told the servants to take the horse away. 
Alexander, the king’s son, heard what his 
father said, and it made him very sorry to 
think that they should lose such a magnifi- 
20 


The Horse That Was Afraid 2h 


cent horse. He turned to the king and asked 
if he might try to tame him. His father 
said, “What, you tame a horse that has been 
too much for the king’s grooms?” But he let 
him try. 

It was a very sunny day, and Alexander 
had noticed that Bucephalus’ shadow fell on 
the ground just in front of him and fright¬ 
ened him. So he ran to the horse and, tak¬ 
ing hold of the bridle, turned him about so 
that he faced the sun, and the shadow fell 
behind him, where he could not see it. Then 
he began to talk to him and stroke his face, 
and before long he was on his back, and the 
horse was tamed. 

The king was so delighted that he gave 
Bucephalus to Alexander, and when he died 
shortly after and Alexander became king, 
this horse helped him to conquer the world. 
For many years he carried his master 
through battle, and at last was killed in 
India. There is a town in India now that 
is called Bucephalia, after him. 

Alexander conquered Bucephalus and 
took away his fear simply by turning his 
face toward the sun. 

We have been told to look to Jesus. I 
think that most of our troubles come when 
we turn our faces away from Him, as this 
horse turned his away from the sun. 

Some days we wake up in the morning and 


22 For the Children’s Hour 


everything goes wrong. We are cross and 
fretful, and don’t like our breakfast, and 
there is trouble at school, and we aro pun¬ 
ished, and altogether it is a bad day all the 
way through. Do you know what the trou¬ 
ble was? We did not look to Jesus that 
morning and ask Him to help us through 
the day. Instead of that we turned our 
faces away and the black shadow of trouble 
was there all day to vex us. 

The good Apostle Paul had many troubles 
in his life, but one day when he was talking 
of them he said, “None of these things trou¬ 
ble me.” They did not trouble him because 
he kept his face toward Jesus, and always 
went to Him in time of need. 

Here is something to remember. When 
the shadows of life become black and trou¬ 
blesome and you are afraid, look to Jesus, 
and see how very quickly they all pass away. 


y 

Doing Our Best 

“Not slothful in business.”— Romans xii. 11. 

Paul couldn’t stand a person who was 
lazy. He tells us to do our very best with 
everything that we undertake. Most of you 
know about the “Corn Clubs” which the gov¬ 
ernment officers started several years ago 
among the boys of the South. Many of the 
farmers were not getting half as much from 
the land as they should. The land was poor, 
the crops were poor, and the farmers were 
poorer, because they did not know how to 
farm in the right way. These government 
officers tried to teach them to do better, but 
they wouldn’t learn. So they gave up try¬ 
ing to do anything with the men and went 
to the boys. They taught them to raise corn 
in a new way. Then they offered prizes to 
those who produced the most from an acre 
of ground. The average yield in Alabama 
had been seventeen bushels to the acre. 
There was a boy in the State who two years 
ago raised two hundred and twenty-eight 
bushels from one acre. This set the men to 
thinking, and they began to do things in a 
different way too. 


23 


24 


For the Children’s Hour 


Now what was the trouble before? They 
had had as good land, and as good arms, and 
as good brains, but they had not done their 
very best, and until they did that they could 
not succeed. 

No man or boy ever gets the most out of 
the soil, or the world, or himself, until he 
has tried his very best. There is no better 
time for boys and girls to think about this 
than now, when so many of us are beginning 
our school work for another year. There are 
some of you who will go to school and you 
will do as little as you can, just enough to 
get through, and then, after a while, you 
will wonder why you do not get more out of 
your school days. It isn’t the clothes you 
wear, or who your family are, or even the 
brains that you have, that will count the 
most during your school days. It is your 
diligence. It is whether you are going to do 
your very best with the tasks that are given 
you. 

There was a boy in Scotland many years 
ago who had to leave school when he was 
ten years old and go to work in a factory. 
He had to work from six in the morning till 
eight at night. He made up his mind that 
he would have an education. At first he 
tried to study at home at night, but that 
would not do. He was so tired that he fell 
asleep over his book. So what do you think 


25 


Doing Our Best 

he did? He took his book to the factory 
with him, set it on the spinning machine, 
and studied while he worked. In this way 
he went through book after book till he was 
ready for the university. That boy was 
David Livingstone. He did great things 
with a very poor opportunity. Some of you 
are going to do a very little with fine oppor¬ 
tunities. There is not one of you who has 
not far more chance than this boy had. 

This is what we ought all to remember as 
we look forward to the year in school: Be 
diligent. Do your very best. 

But Paul meant more than this. He 
wanted us to be diligent not only in our 
school work, but in our Christian lives, too. 

Once, while in the West, an old man said 
to me, “I joined the Church back East, when 
I was a boy, but I haven’t worked at it 
much for over forty years.” That old man 
had the right idea, though he did not carry 
it out. Being a Christian is a real business. 
It is the biggest, and the hardest, and the 
finest business in the world, and God wants 
us all to work at it all the time, and do our 
very best. I have been thinking, if some of 
us did not work any harder over our lessons 
for the day-school, than we do over the les¬ 
son for the Sunday school, we would never 
have much chance of getting into the high 
school by and by. God wants us all to be as 


26 For the Children’s Hour 

diligent and careful over our work in the 
Sunday school and the Church, as we are 
over our work in the ^ay-school and in busi¬ 
ness. 


VI 


A Little Bit Late 

“And the door -was shut.”— Matthew xxv. 10. 

Jesus told the story of a wedding. There 
were some girls who were invited. In the 
days when Jesus lived, if people came late 
to a wedding, they could not get in. The 
door was shut. They had to be there before 
the wedding began. They could not come 
straggling in whenever they felt like it, as 
they do now. 

These girls of whom Jesus spoke, had re¬ 
ceived the invitation, but they were thought¬ 
less and careless, and did not begin to get 
ready till it was very late, and when at last 
they came to the door it was shut and they 
could not get in. They missed the wedding 
and the fun, and the wedding cake, and 
everything, because they were a little bit 
late. 

It will not do to be late. It makes trou¬ 
ble for ourselves or for somebody always. 
The great battle of Waterloo was lost by 
Napoleon because someone was late. He 
had ordered Marshall Grouchy to march 
with his army to help him. Marshall 
27 


28 For the Children’s Hour 


Grouchy did not start at once, as he should 
have done. When he did move Waterloo had 
been fought and Napoleon had been de¬ 
feated. 

There are several reasons why children 
should be very careful about being late. One 
is that they are starting habits that will fol¬ 
low them all their lives. Every morning I 
see children going late to school. And they 
are usually the same children. They think 
that it will not make any difference if they 
are a few minutes behind. But all the time 
they are forming a habit that will stay by 
them all their lives, and some day they will 
be late when it matters very much. 

There was a man like that who had fallen 
into the habit of always being late. He had 
a fine position. One day the firm that em¬ 
ployed him sent him to another city on a 
very important errand. There was only one 
train he could take and he was told that he 
must not miss it. He was late in starting, 
and on the way he stopped to talk to some¬ 
one. When he reached the station it was 
one minute past the time for the train to go. 
He rushed through the waiting room and up 
to the gate, but it was shut. He had lost the 
train, and he lost his place, because he was 
a little bit late. 

Then we must be careful about being late 
because of the trouble it makes for others. 


A Little Bit Late 


29 


There were eight women once, who had an 
important meeting set for a certain hour. 
Seven of them were on time, but the eighth 
kept the rest waiting for a quarter of an 
hour. When she came in, she said, “I hope 
you will excuse me for being late.” There 
was a plain-spoken old Quaker lady there. 
She said, “I don’t know whether we can ex¬ 
cuse you or not. It is bad enough for you to 
have lost a quarter hour of your own time. 
But there are seven others here whose time 
you have wasted for a quarter of an hour 
each, making nearly two hours, which was 
not your own.” When we are tardy we 
waste other people’s time as well as our 
own, and we have no right to steal their time 
any more than we have a right to steal their 
money or their watches. 

Being late is a bad habit, and bad habits 
are like weeds. They ought to be rooted up 
and destroyed. You should all be sowing 
the seeds of good habits. One of the most 
useful of all habits is punctuality. Always 
try to be on time. Then other people will 
come to rely upon you. 

But there is something more important 
about this subject than anything that has 
yet been said. In this story that Jesus told 
about the wedding feast, He was really 
thinking of heaven. We all expect to go to 
heaven sometimes. We have all been in- 


30 


For the Children’s Hour 


vited, and we are all going, we think. But 
some of us are putting off getting ready, as 
these foolish girls did. We will delay until, 
when by and by, we do start, maybe we will 
find that the door is shut. We will be too 
late. 

When you have anything to do, the best 
time to do it is now. Don’t put it off. You 
all intend to be Christians some time: Do 
not delay. Now is the time. 


VII 


A Child Christian 

“ Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor 
with God and man.”— Luke ii. 52. 


What is it for a boy or girl to be a Chris¬ 
tian? There are so many people who have 
wrong ideas about this. They think that if 
a child isn’t a Christian in the same way 
that a grown-up person is, he isn’t a Chris¬ 
tian at all. That is not fair, is it? Chil¬ 
dren do not walk like grown people do. In¬ 
stead of going soberly along, they skip and 
run and jump. They do not read the same 
sort of books, or play the same kind of 
games, that men and women do. And they 
are not Christians in the same way their fa¬ 
thers and mothers are. 

Sometimes a good woman will say to me, 
“I am so troubled about my little girl. I do 
not believe that she will ever be a good 
Christian. She cannot sit still, and she does 
not listen to the sermon, and she is so full 
of mischief.” 

I say to her, “Of course she is full of mis¬ 
chief and can’t sit still. You musn’t expect 
a little girl to be a Christian like a grown- 
31 


32 


For the Children’s Hour 


up woman. She will have to he a Christian 
in her own way, which is a little girl’s way. 
By and by, when she has grown up, she will 
be a Christian in your way. Some of the 
finest Christians I have ever known were 
little boys and girls, as full of fun and mis¬ 
chief as they could be. But they were boy 
and girl Christians.” 

Now let me tell you how boys and girls 
can be Christians. First, they must never 
be afraid to show their colors. There was a 
boy once who went away to boarding school. 
He was put in the same room with several 
other boys. When it came time to go to bed 
he knelt down and said his prayers. The 
other boys began to laugh and make fun of 
him. They threw things at him and tried to 
make him stop. But the next night he knelt 
down and said his prayers again. The boys 
didn’t make fun of him then. After a night 
or two more, one or two of the other boys 
started to say their prayers, too. They had 
known all along that they ought to pray, but 
they had been afraid. Because that one boy 
was not afraid to show his colors, it made 
better boys of all of them. 

Never be afraid to show your colors. If 
you are Christians don’t be afraid to have 
other people know it. It will do you good 
and will do them good, too. 

Then, second, Christian boys and girls 


'A Child Christian 


33 


must be brave enough to fight against Satan. 
There are some boys who are brave enough 
when it comes to fighting other boys, but 
they haven’t very much courage when Satan 
is around. 

The greatest teacher who ever lived in 
England, Dr. Thomas Arnold, once said, “I 
have had enough of boys who love God. I 
want more boys who love God and hate the 
devil.” 

If we are to be real, true Christians we 
must hate the devil, and be brave enough to 
resist him when he comes trying to make us 
do what we all know is wrong. 

Third, Christian boys and girls always 
obey their parents. In His twelfth year 
Jesus went up to Jerusalem. After this 
visit we are told that He went home with 
Joseph and Mary and was subject unto 
them. The best way that Jesus could do 
God’s will when He was a boy was by being 
obedient to them, and doing all that He 
could to help them. The old records say 
that Jesus helped Joseph by picking up the 
chips and shavings in the carpenter shop, 
and He helped His mother by carrying water 
for her from the well. There is no better 
way for boys and girls to show that they are 
Christians than by being obedient and help¬ 
ful at home. 

There is one more thing that boys and 


34 For the Children’s Hour 


girls must remember when they start out to 
be Christians. We must never forget that 
we are partners of Jesus. If you have a 
very good chum you always share every¬ 
thing that you have with him. If you are 
thinking of going somewhere or of doing 
something, you go and tell him about it. 
When we are Christians Jesus becomes our 
chum. We ought to tell Him everything 
that we are planning to do, and if it is some¬ 
thing that is not going to please Him we 
ought not to do it. 

They said that Professor Blackie always 
wore an old plaid shawl about his shoulders. 
One day a friend asked him why he did it. 
He said, “Long ago, when wife and I were 
young, she came to me one day and said, 
‘Your overcoat is very thin and shabby.’ 
I told her that I could not afford to have a 
new one. It costs too much. So she went 
upstairs and fetched her plaid shawl and 
put it over my shoulders that winter day, 
and now I always wear the plaid to remem¬ 
ber her love.” 

That is the biggest part of being a Chris¬ 
tian. We must never forget our friend and 
Lord, Jesus Christ. 


VIII 


Words That Fit 

“ A word fitly spoken is liko apples of gold in pictures 
of silver.”—P roverbs xxv. 11. 

Did you ever have a pair of shoes that did 
not fit? You know how they pinched, and 
rubbed, and hurt, until you were very glad 
to take them off. Sometimes words do not 
fit. Instead of being easy, and comfortable, 
they are stiff and tight and uncomfortable. 

When Joseph was a boy he had a dream 
one night. It was a queer dream and the 
next day he told it to his brothers. It made 
them very angry. A little while after Joseph 
dreamed again. And what do you think he 
did? He went and told this dream, too, to 
his brothers. It was a very foolish thing to 
do, for he knew that it would make them 
angry. His words did not fit and they made 
his brothers very uncomfortable. 

Once in college one of the boys went home 
for the Christmas holiday. While he was 
at home his father died. It was a great 
shock to him and almost broke his heart. 
A week or two later he came back. One of 
the boys met him, and said, "I hope you had 
a good time while you were away.” The 


36 For the Children’s Hour 

poor boy did not say a word, but turned 
away and walked off alone. His friend did 
not mean to hurt him, but the words did not 
fit. 

Sometimes when we are downhearted, and 
discouraged, and need some one to cheer us 
up, along comes a friend who says some¬ 
thing that makes us feel a great deal worse 
than we did before, because the words do 
not fit. 

I have a good tailor. When he makes a 
suit for me I know it is going to fit. There 
are some people like that. Their words al¬ 
ways fit. There was a good woman whom 
everyone loved. She was the most popular 
person in the village. A stranger came one 
day and asked what it was that made every 
one like her so much. She was not good- 
looking. She was not rich, and could not 
wear very fine clothes. Some one said to 
him, “I will tell you why we all love her. 
She always says something that makes us 
feel better.” That was the secret. Her 
words were always a fit and people loved 
her. 

There is a little story of Bishop Wilber- 
force. He was walking along the street one 
day when he met a crowd of boys. After he 
had passed they began to call out impudent 
things after the good man. One of them 
shouted out, “Can you tell me the way to 


Words That Fit 


37 


heaven ?” Now the bishop might have gone 
on and paid no attention to the boy, but he 
didn’t. He turned around and said, “Yes, 
my boy, I can tell you the way to heaven. 
Just take a sharp turn to the right, and 
keep on straight.” That boy grew up to be 
a good and useful man, and he never forgot 
that answer of the bishop’s. It was a word 
that fitted him. 

When you go to the shoe store to buy a 
pair of shoes, does the shoe man take down 
the very first pair that he sees and put them 
on you? No, indeed, you would have a poor 
fit if he did. He finds out the size that fits 
you, and that is the shoe that he sells you. 
That is what we ought to do when we speak. 
We ought to think of the people to whom we 
are speaking, and make our words fit, so 
that they are made comfortable and happy. 

There is something more in the text that 
we must not pass by. Solomon says that, 
“words that fit” are like “apples of gold in 
pictures of silver.” Let us see what that 
means. There were no apples in Palestine 
such as we have. The word “apples” means 
oranges. The finest oranges in the world 
are the Jaffa oranges that grow in Palestine. 
They are big and luscious, and look like 
yellow gold. By “pictures of silver” he 
means the orange blossoms. The orange tree 
is the only tree on which you can see fruit 


38 For the Children’s Hour 


and blossoms growing at the same time. 
And there is no more beautiful sight in the 
world than an orange tree, with the lovely 
golden oranges and a little wreath of blos¬ 
soms around each orange. It was the very 
finest sight that Solomon could think of, and 
he says that words that fit are like those 
lovely orange trees. They are a delight to 
every one who comes near. 

When Jesus was here the people loved to 
hear Him talk. Luke says that they mar¬ 
velled at the gracious words that came out 
of His mouth. A gracious word is a word 
that fits. Jesus knew how to say always the 
right words. This is a fine thing for young 
people to cultivate. Be careful what you 
say. Never speak a word that hurts some¬ 
one else. Words, you know, can hurt quite 
as much as a blow, and the word will be re¬ 
membered long after a blow is forgotten. 
Try to have your words as beautiful as a 
golden orange, framed in a circle of silvery 
blossoms. 


IX 


The Bush That Burned and Burned 
and Wouldn’t Burn Up 

“And he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, 
and the bush was not consumed.”—E xodus iii. 2. 


When Moses was a young man he was 
guilty of a great crime and had to run away. 
He went off into the land of Midian and 
hired himself to a man who owned a great 
many sheep. Every day Moses took the 
sheep off into the wilderness in search of 
pasture. One day something very strange 
happened. It was something like this. In 
the wilderness there were many thorn 
hushes, and as the sheep came along they 
became caught on the thorns. Then, when 
they pulled themselves away, they left some 
of their fine wool sticking on the thorns. 
That morning Jethro, the man who owned 
the sheep, said to Moses, “Moses, have you 
noticed how the thorns on that big bush out 
there by the rock are tearing the wool off 
the backs of these sheep. Look at that ewe 
there. Her fine fleece has been almost 
ruined. We are going to need all the wool 
we can get this winter. I think you had 
39 


40 


For the Children’s Hour 


better take some fire out there and burn 
that bush. 

So Moses took some fire, and went out to 
the bush. He piled the leaves around it and 
set them on fire, and before long there was 
the finest kind of a blaze. But there was 
something very strange about that fire. The 
bush burned and burned, but it didn’t burn 
up. 

You have all seen the iron gas-logs that 
people have in their fire-places. They turn 
on the gas and touch a match to it and the 
log begins to burn. But the log never burns 
up. Now this is not strange, for we all know 
that we cannot burn iron. But suppose you 
were to see a bush that was burning, and did 
not burn up. You could be sure that there 
was something very wonderful about it. 

That is what Moses saw that day, and as 
he came nearer to try to see what it meant, 
God spoke to him and told him the meaning 
of the burning bush. 

The children of Israel at that time were 
in Egypt, and the king had made up his 
mind that he was going to destroy them all. 
The people were very sad and despondent, 
for it seemed as if they did not have a friend 
in the whole world. But God told Moses 
that just as the fire had burned and burned 
and yet the bush did not bum up, so the 
king of Egypt could do his very worst but 


The Bush That Burned 41 

he never could destroy the children of Is¬ 
rael. God would not let him. 

When I was a little boy I used to worry 
about things sometimes. Maybe some of 
you boys and girls are worrying now. There 
are wicked men and nations in the world 
that are trying to destroy everything that 
we love and care for. But we must not 
worry. After that fire had burned and 
burned till it had burned out, the bush was 
standing there as straight and strong as it 
was before. And we may be sure that when 
wicked men have done all the evil that they 
can, the things that we love will all be here 
as they have always been. 

In Pilgrim’s Progress we read about a 
house in which there was a fire burning in 
the fireplace. That fire was called the Light 
of Truth. And the devil was standing be¬ 
fore the fire trying to put it out by pouring 
water on it. But the more water he poured 
the more the fire burned. The man who saw 
it couldn’t understand it. At last he went 
around behind the fire, and what do you sup¬ 
pose he found? Jesus was standing there, 
with a can of oil in His hand, and whenever 
the devil threw some water on the fire, He 
>vould throw oil on it secretly, so that the 
more the devil tried to put it out the higher 
and brighter it burned. It is always so. 

The more Satan hates us and tries to de- 


42 For the Children’s Hour 

stroy us, the more Jesus loves us and helps 
us. 

The emblem of the Church of Scotland is 
the burning bush. There was a time hun¬ 
dreds of years ago when tyrants tried to de¬ 
stroy the Church of Scotland by persecuting 
and killing the Christians. But the more 
they killed the more the church grew. It 
was like the bush that Moses saw. Men 
might kindle the fire about it, and pile on 
the fuel, but they never could burn it up. 

To all of us this story of Moses ought to 
be very precious. It teaches that evil can 
never really harm those who love God. 


X 


Little Foxes 

“The little foxes that spoil the vines.”— Song of Sol¬ 
omon ii. 15. 

In the land of Palestine there were many 
vineyards. These vineyards were surround¬ 
ed on all sides by thorn hedges to keep the 
thieves and the animals out. The foxes were 
their special enemies. The owners of the 
vines had to be on the lookout for the foxes. 
They had to make the hedges very high and 
strong to keep them out. Sometimes when 
the hedge was thick enough and strong 
enough to keep out a big fox, there would 
be a small hole somewhere that a little one 
could crawl through, and the little foxes 
could do as much damage as the large ones. 
So Solomon spoke of the “little foxes that 
spoil the vines.” 

A man a few days ago was showing his 
fine chickens. They are kept in coops that 
are surrounded by strong wire. He said, 
“We have our greatest trouble with the rats. 
It isn’t hard to keep the big animals away 
from them, but the rats are so small that 
they can get in almost anywhere.” 

43 


44 For the Children’s Hour 

It is the same way with disease. We are 
always on the watch against big diseases. 
If there is small-pox, or scarlet fever, or 
diphtheria in the neighborhood, how care¬ 
fully everyone watches for fear he will catch 
it. Nobody pays much attention to a cold. 
It is such a little thing we think it doesn’t 
matter much, but sometimes a cold is as 
dangerous and fatal as a far worse disease. 
It is the little things that we must be on the 
lookout for, and against which we must 
guard ourselves—the little foxes that spoil 
the vines. 

But it was really our sins that Solomon 
was speaking of when he told us about these 
little foxes. We are not in much danger 
from big sins. We watch ourselves and keep 
them out. It is the little ones that get in 
and spoil things. 

They used to say that when an old fox 
came to a hedge, and found there a little 
hole that he could not squeeze through, the 
sly old fellow would go home and bring one 
of the little foxes and put him through. The 
little fox would get the grapes and bring 
them out to the big fox. 

Let me tell you about four big foxes and 
four little ones. One of the big foxes is ly¬ 
ing. We are ashamed to tell a lie. There is 
a hedge that he cannot get through. It is 
the ninth commandment, and the teachings 


Little Foxes 


45 


of our parents. No indeed, we keep him out. 
We wouldn’t tell lies for anything. But he 
has a little fox that he sends in. The little 
fox’s name is “Exaggeration.” Some people 
can never tell a story, or repeat something 
they have heard, without making it a little 
bigger than it really is. We keep the big 
lie out, but often this little one, whose name 
is Exaggeration, gets in. That is one little 
fox. 

Another big old fox that we keep out is 
stealing. We would none of us allow such 
a thing as that to come in, would we? Why, 
stealing is one of the worst things that we 
know anything about. But stealing has a 
little fox that comes along sometimes and 
squeezes in. The name of this little fox is 
“Borrowing.” None of us would take some¬ 
thing from somebody else and keep it. That 
would be stealing, but we might borrow it 
and then forget to give it back. That is an¬ 
other little fox to look out for. 

Another big fox is swearing. Swearing 
is vulgar and coarse and wicked. We keep 
the hedge high and tight, so he can’t, come 
in. But there is a little fox that goes along 
with him that will creep in unless we look 
out. The name of this little fox is “Coarse 
Language.” There are so many boys who 
would not swear, but they will use rough 
words that do as much harm as oaths. 


46 For the Children’s Hour 


There is one more fox, a very dangerous 
one, I must tell you about. His name is 
“Murder.” Murder is the most awful of 
crimes. Not one of us would for an instant 
think of allowing such a beast to come into 
our lives. But there is a little fox here too. 
Did you ever become so angry that you 
thought murder, even if you did not commit 
it? Jesus said once that He who permitted 
angry passions to get the better of him is 
guilty of murder. We must make the fence 
so tight that this little beast cannot get in. 

You see, it will not do to guard against 
the big foxes and let the little ones in. It 
is the little foxes that spoil the vines. 


XI 


Our Prayers 

“I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice and 
my prayer.”— Psalm cxvi. 1. 


When we first began to talk, our good 
mothers taught us to kneel down at night 
beside the bed and pray, and to believe that 
God can hear our prayers. Many of us have 
never gone to sleep at night without first 
saying our prayers, asking God to keep us 
through the night. 

Sometimes maybe we think that God is so 
big, and so great, and so busy, that He hasn’t 
time to think about what boys and girls are 
saying. If you were to go to the office of 
one of the busiest men in this city to-mor¬ 
row, he would very likely not be able to see 
you. He has too much to do to bother him¬ 
self about boys and girls. But suppose that 
man was your own father. He would have 
time. He would always be glad to see you 
and to hear all about your troubles and 
your wants. 

Now God is our Father, and there never 
is a time when He is too busy to hear boys 
and girls when they want to pray to Him. 

47 


48 For the Children’s Hour 


In London, at the top of the Royal Ex¬ 
change, there is a great weathercock to show 
which way the wind blows. It is made in 
the shape of a cricket. We have seen weath¬ 
ercocks at the top of buildings that looked 
like birds, and trumpets, and arrows, but 
we do not often see one in the shape of a 
cricket. 

There is an interesting story about that 
weather vane. Three hundred and fifty 
years ago there was a very poor woman 
walking along a country lane with a little 
baby boy in her arms. By and by she came 
to a field. She opened the gate, laid the 
baby down behind the hedge and went away 
and left it. 

In a little while a boy came down that 
lane. All at once he heard a chirping. It 
was the loudest cricket that he ever heard. 
He had been thinking about going fishing 
that very afternoon. Did you ever go fish¬ 
ing and use crickets for bait? I have. Well, 
this boy wanted that cricket, so he hopped 
over that hedge to get it, and what do you 
think he found near where the cricket was 
chirping? It was the baby. He took him 
home to his mother and she took care of 
him. That baby grew up and became Sir 
Thomas Gresham, who was three times elect¬ 
ed Lord Mayor of London. It was he who 
built the Royal Exchange, and put that 


49 


Our Prayer^ 

cricket on the top. He always loved crick¬ 
ets, for it was the chirping of one that led 
the boy to find him. So he put one on the 
building to show that God always watches 
over His children, and is always thinking 
about them. 

One thing we must remember when we 
pray. God helps those who try to help 
themselves. If we do not help ourselves we 
ought not to expect God to help us. 

There were two little girls on their way 
to school one day. One of them always knew 
her lessons and the other one never did. The 
little girl who never knew her lessons said 
to the other, “How do you learn your les¬ 
sons so well?” She replied, “I pray to God 
and He always helps me with them.” So 
the other little girl thought that she would 
try that, too, but the next day she did not 
know any more than usual. She said she 
was not going to pray any more, that it did 
not do any good. The other girl said to her, 
“Did you study real hard after you had 
prayed?” “No,” she said, “I didn’t study. 
I thought if I prayed that was all there was 
to it.” 

God couldn’t help her, because she did 
not help herself. God wants us to pray 
when we need help and then do the very 
best that we can ourselves. 


XII 


Perseverance 

“Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his face con¬ 
tinually/ ; — 1 Chron. xvi. 11 . 

One of the fine stories of the Old Testa¬ 
ment is about Elijah the prophet. There 
had been a great drought in the land of Is¬ 
rael for three years and a half. No rain had 
fallen; there was very little to eat. The 
springs and streams were dry, and most of 
the cattle had died. There was great dis¬ 
tress and trouble everywhere. So Elijah 
went to the Lord for help. He kneeled down 
and asked the Lord to make it rain. Then 
he sent his servant to look out and see if 
there were any clouds in the sky. He came 
back and said he could not see one anywhere. 
So he went on praying, and told his servant 
to go and look. But there w T as not a cloud 
to be seen. Some people would have been 
discouraged, and said, “What is the use of 
praying, anyway?” But Elijah kept on with 
his prayers, and after he had prayed seven 
times, the servant came back and told him 
that there was a little cloud coming up in 
the West. Before long the whole sky was 
50 


Perseverance 


51 


filled with black clouds and there was a fine 
rain. If Elijah had given up because the 
answer did not come all at once that rain 
would not have come. 

Every morning we have news in our pa¬ 
pers from Europe and every part of the 
world. Do you know how we get that news 
from so far away? It is telegraphed under 
the sea. There is a cable that reaches under 
the ocean all the way from America to Eu¬ 
rope, and they send messages over this 
cable. The first Atlantic cable was laid by 
Cyrus Field. Mr. Field believed that it 
could be done and he set to work. He strug¬ 
gled thirteen years before he succeeded. 
People told him that he was crazy, that it 
could never be done. Hte money gave out, 
and his health failed. But he never gave 
up and at last the work was done. He said 
when it was finished that he had prayed God 
that he might live till it was completed. 

Dr. Arnold, one of the greatest teachers 
who ever lived, once said, “The boys who get 
on in the world are not the boys with the 
most talents, but with the most energy.” 
They are the boys who keep on trying even 
if they do not succeed at first. 

One of my friends was telling me of a lit¬ 
tle mouse he saw. He was sitting in his li¬ 
brary reading one evening when he heard a 
sound, and looking down, he saw a tiny lit- 


52 


For the Children’s Hour 


tie mouse. He had found a peanut and was 
trying to get it to his hole in the wall. The 
peanut was too big for him to take in his 
mouth. So he tried to hold it between his 
front paws and his chin. When he had al¬ 
most reached the hole the peanut slipped 
out of his grasp and fell back on the floor. 
He went back and took hold and started all 
over again. But each time, when he had it 
almost at the hole, he lost it again. The 
mouse tried seven times before he succeeded. 

When you come home from school with a 
hard problem and fail to solve it, what do 
you do? I know what some of you do. You 
give it up, or you go and ask someone else 
to work it for you. The only real way to 
succeed is to keep on trying, and keep on 
trying, till you do solve it. 

Now, this is what God wants us to do in 
prayer. If you ask Him for something and 
He does not give it to you all at once, you 
must not think that He is never going to give 
it. We may have to pray as many times as 
Elijah did, or perhaps more than seven 
times, before God sends the answer. But it 
always comes if we keep on praying. 


XIII 


How to Pray 

* 1 And God heard the voice of the lad. ’ ’— Genesis xxi. 17. 

Sometimes God does not give us what we 
ask for in our prayers because we are not 
ready to receive it. I knew a boy who went 
to his father and asked him to give him a 
watch. He was a very little fellow. He 
could not tell time, and was not old enough 
yet to know how to take care of a watch, so 
his father did not give it to him then. He 
waited till the boy was older, and could tell 
the time, and knew how to be careful of a 
watch. Then he gave him one. 

God has to do that with us sometimes. 
We ask Him for things which we would not 
know how to use if we had them. So He 
waits awhile, till we are a little older and 
wiser and better, and then He gives them 
to us. 

God cannot answer some of our prayers 
because we go to Him in the wrong spirit. 
Almost all of us know some little prayer 
that we repeat every night before we go to 
bed. There are some nights when we are so 
tired, or in such a hurry, that we kneel down 
and rush through our little prayer without 
thinking what we are saying. What do you 
53 


54 For the Children’s Hour 


think God thinks of a prayer like that? We 
can’t expect Him to listen, if we are not lis¬ 
tening and paying attention ourselves. 

Most boys have played with a bow and 
arrow. If the bow-string is loose and you 
fit the arrow on it and try to shoot, it will 
do nothing more than fall at your feet. But 
if you tighten the string, and then fit the 
arrow and shoot, it will fly off a long dis¬ 
tance. That is the difference between say¬ 
ing our prayers and praying. When we 
kneel down and say our prayers, without 
thinking what we are doing or saying, they 
do not go very far, but when we really pray 
with all our heart, then the prayer goes up 
to God and He answers. 

Before we close this subject I must tell 
you what we ought to talk to God about in 
our prayers. First of all, we must thank 
Him for the good things that He has given 
us. Everything that we have has come from 
Him. If one of your friends gives you a gift 
and you forget to thank him for it, he will 
not be very likely to give you anything again 
very soon. God is like our earthly friends. 
He likes to be thanked, and we must not for¬ 
get this part of our prayers. 

Then we ought never to pray without ask¬ 
ing Him to forgive our sins. We all do a 
great many wrong and wicked things every 
day. God says that if we come and tell Him 


55 


How to Pray 

about our sins He will forgive them, so we 
ought always to ask for forgiveness of sins. 

Third, we can ask God to give us what 
we want. But we must be very careful how 
we ask it. If you wanted a quarter and went 
to your father for it, do you think he would 
be more likely to give it to you if you said, 
“Father, I want some money, and you must 
give it to me,” or if you said, “Father, I need 
some money. I wish you would give it to 
me, unless you think it would be better for 
me not to have it.” God wants us to ask 
Him for what we need, but He also wants us 
to be willing not to have it if it is not best 
for us. 

Again, we must not forget others in our 
prayers. When we meet a person who is al¬ 
ways talking about himself we know that he 
is a selfish person, and we soon become very 
tired of him. God does not want us to talk 
about ourselves alone in our prayers. That 
would be a very selfish sort of a prayer. We 
ought never to forget to ask Him to remem¬ 
ber those who have not the same good things 
that we have. 

Last, He wants us to tell Him that we love 
Him and are trying to serve Him. Your 
mother likes to hear you tell her that you 
love her, and no man ought to be too old to 
do that. God too loves to hear us say that 
we love and serve Him. 


XIV 


The Eagle’s Nest 

‘‘As the eagle stirreth up her nest.”—D euteronomy 
xxxii. 11. 

Moses, who was the author of the book of 
Deuteronomy, had lived many years of his 
life in the wilderness, and among the moun¬ 
tains. He knew something of the habits of 
the wild animals and the birds. No doubt 
he had often seen the great eagles circling 
about the mountains and searching for food 
to carry to their little ones. The eagle, you 
know, makes her nest in the rocks far up in 
the tops of the mountains. She makes the 
nest of thorns, and over the thorns she puts 
some very soft wool or down. There in the 
nest the eagle lays her eggs, and there they 
are hatched, and there they stay. By and 
by it is time for the little eagles to fly. What 
do you think the old eagle does then? She 
goes to the nest and with her great talons 
she tears off the soft down and wool, so that 
the sharp thorns prick the little birds and 
they have to fly to get away from the thorns. 
But that is not all that the old eagle does. 
When the little eagle tumbles out of the nest 
56 


57 


The Eagle’s Nest 

to get away from the rough, sharp thorns, 
she gets under him with her great, powerful 
wings, so that he cannot fall, and helps him 
to fly. 

Now it seems pretty hard for the old eagle 
to tear up the pretty nest that is so warm 
and comfortable, so that the thorns hurt the 
little birds, but she has got to do it if they 
are ever to learn to fly. She hurts them be¬ 
cause she wants to help them and make them 
strong. 

Our fathers and mothers have to do that 
sometimes. There was a father and mother 
who had one son whom they loved more than 
anything else in all the world. They had a 
beautiful home and this boy had everything 
that his heart could wish for. One day, 
when he was not a little boy any longer, his 
father said to the mother, “If we keep our 
boy here always and take care of him and 
let him have his own way, he will never 
learn to make his own way in the world. 
He will never be a strong man. I think 
it is about time that we make him start out 
for himself.” 

The next day the father called the boy and 
told him that he w T as a man now, and it was 
time that he was earning his own living. So 
he found him a: position and made him take 
care of himself. 

Maybe that boy thought when the father 


58 


For the Children’s Hour 


sent him out to make his own way that he 
did not love him any more. But it was be¬ 
cause he did love him so that he did it. He 
was like the eagle that stirs up the nest so 
that the little ones will learn to fly. 

God does the same thing to us sometimes. 
When we are happy and contented and 
everything is going so smoothly, God sends 
trouble and sorrow and disappointment to 
us. We think that He does not love us. But 
it is because He does love us that He sends 
it. He wants to make us strong and good. 

I heard a great man say not very long ago 
that all the very best things that he had 
learned in life had come to him through his 
sorrows. As the eagle stirred up the nest, 
so God came to him and made him leave his 
selfishness and ease and fly away to bigger 
and better things. 

When the little eagles grow big and 
strong, then they thank the old mother eagle 
for making them fly for themselves. And 
by and by, when we know more, we will be 
glad that our fathers and mothers, and the 
good God who loves us, make it hard for us 
sometimes. 


XV 


Imitators 

“Be ye therefore imitators of God, as dear children.”— 
Ephesians v. 1. 

Paul tells us that we ought to be imitators 
of God. What is an imitator? An imitator 
is one who looks at someone else and tries 
to be like him. Little boys like to imitate 
their fathers. They watch and whatever 
their fathers do they try to do, too. Little 
girls love to imitate their mothers. I came 
upon two little girls this week. They were 
playing keep-house, and each one had sev¬ 
eral dolls for children. They were talking 
to those dolls as they had heard their moth¬ 
ers talk to them. They were imitators of 
their mothers. 

Not only do we imitate our parents when 
we are little, we are imitators all our lives. 
If there is someone whom we admire very 
much we are sure to try to do as he does. 
It is very important w T hat sort of people we 
imitate. If they are good we, too, will be 
good; if they are bad, we will be like them. 

Paul tells us to be imitators of God. That 
is the best advice that was ever given to 

59 


60 


For the Children’s Hour 


children. Imitate Jesus and your life will 
he like His. 

Let us see how we can do this. What did 
Jesus do that we can imitate? First, we 
are told that He obeyed His parents. He 
did what they wanted Him to do. He helped 
His mother in the work of the house, and in 
caring for His brothers and sisters. He as¬ 
sisted Joseph in the carpenter shop. He 
was good and gentle and kind at home. A 
great man once said that no boy ever be¬ 
came great who did not honor his parents. 
If we are to be imitators of Jesus the best 
place to begin is right here. We must honor 
and obey our parents. 

Jesus did another thing that every boy 
and girl ought to imitate. He kept Himself 
unspotted from sin. Let me tell you what 
that means. Some day, when you are very 
small, your mother put a clean dress on you 
and told you not to get any spots on it. But 
there was a tine mud-puddle in front of the 
house and you forgot all about the clean 
dress, and the first thing you knew it was 
spotted with mud. Every time we do a mean 
thing, or tell a lie, or lose our tempers, our 
souls are spotted like that dress with the 
mud on it. Jesus wants us to keep our char¬ 
acters spotless. That is what He did, and 
if we are imitators of Him we will try very 
hard to be like Him. 


Imitators 


61 


There was a third thing that Jesns did 
that we ought to imitate. He went about do¬ 
ing good. Someone was telling me of a lit¬ 
tle boy she knew. She said, “He goes 
around trying to see what mischief he can 
get into.” Jesus went about trying to see 
what good He could do. Suppose we try 
that, boys and girls. See how much good we 
can do in a day. It is much more fun than 
trying to see how much mischief we can get 
into. 

Long ago there was a little Greek slave 
girl. She was ragged and dirty and untidy 
and ignorant, because she did not know any 
better, for there had never been anyone to 
teach her. One day she was walking along 
one of the streets of Athens when she came 
to a beautiful fountain. There was the 
statue of a beautiful woman above the foun¬ 
tain. She looked at the statue for a few mo¬ 
ments, and then she looked down into the 
water and noticed that her face was dirty. 
She made up her mind that she would come 
Lack the next day with a clean face, like the 
face of the statue. So the next day when 
she came her face was clean. Then she saw 
that the woman’s hair was neat and tidy. 
She looked down into the water and saw; 
how tousled hers was, and said to herself, 
“I’ll make my hair like hers before I come 
back to-morrow.” The next day her hair 


62 


For the Children’s Hour 


was neat, and her old torn dress was mend¬ 
ed and clean. And so day by day as she 
looked at the beautiful statue she became 
finer and better herself. That is what we 
are to do. We are to look every day at 
Jesus, and try every day to he a little more 
like Him. That is the best way to be “imita¬ 
tors of God, as dear children.” 


XVI 


What God Sees 

“When thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.”’— 
John i. 48. 

One day a man named Nathanael came to 
Jesus. He had never seen the Lord before, 
and he thought that Jesus did not know 
anything about him, but the Lord did know 
him. Nathanael couldn’t understand it. He 
said to Jesus, “How do you know of me?” 
The Lord answered, “When you were there 
under the fig tree I knew you.” A little be¬ 
fore this Nathanael had gone out to a quiet 
corner in his garden to say his prayers. He 
thought that no one knew he was there. But 
Jesus saw him. 

We sometimes think that we are all alone, 
and no one will see what we are doing, or 
hear what we are saying, but we are never 
alone, for God is always there and can see 
and hear what we do and say. 

A little while ago, Mr. Gerard, the Am¬ 
bassador to Germany, came home to Amer¬ 
ica. He said that while he lived in Berlin 
there were a number of German servants in 
his house, who were spies. They watched 
everything that he did, and tried to listen 
to every word that he said. He had to be 
very careful all the time because there was 
63 


64 For the Children’s Hour 


always someone who was listening and 
watching. 

I went into a home one day and found 
that the children had been in mischief. 
Their father and mother were away and they 
thought that no one could see or hear. But 
there was One who did know. It was Jesus. 
He saw Nathanael that day under the fig 
tree, when he thought that no one was 
around. And he saw those children too 
when they thought they were alone. 

And he sees not only the wicked things 
that we do. He sees the good things, too. 
No one ever does a kind act, or speaks a kind 
word, that God does not know about it and 
remember it. You may do a good deed and 
forget all about it. And the person for 
whom you do it may forget. But God never 
forgets. 

There is a story of two little children 
standing before the window of a store in one 
of our large cities. The children were very 
poor and very ragged. They were looking 
with longing eyes at the good things to eat 
they saw in the window. The little girl 
who was older, was very sad because she 
knew that they had no money to buy any¬ 
thing. Before long the little boy began to 
cry. 

“Harry,” said the little girl, “Don’t cry. 
Let’s play we have some money, and are go- 


mat God Sees 65 

ing in to buy something for mother. What 
would you get her.” 

“I’d get her that big orange,” said the lit¬ 
tle boy, “maybe it would make her better.” 

Just then someone behind them said, “Is 
your mother sick?” “Yes,” said the girl, 
“and the doctor says she ought to have good 
things to eat, and we are just playing that 
we are going to buy them for her.” 

The man said, “Come inside and you can 
choose what you want for your mother.” 

“But,” said the girl, “we haven’t any 
money.” 

“Never mind,” said the man, “come any¬ 
way.” 

So they went into the store and he filled 
a basket with good things to take to the 
sick mother. When the man gave it to her, 
the little girl said, “What is your name”? 

“O, never mind my name,” he said. 

“But,” said she, “mother has always 
taught me to thank God for what He gives 
us and I want to tell Him about you.” 

But the man w^ent away without telling 
his name. And that night when the little 
girl knelt down to say her prayers, she said, 
“Bemember the kind man who helped us to¬ 
day. You know his name.” 

Yes, God knew his name and He knows 
the name of every boy and every girl, and 
every man and every woman who does a 
generous and thoughtful thing for others. 


XVII 


Scars 

“What are those wounds?”—Z echariah xiii. 6. 

We are to think to-day about scars. There 
was a little girl in the hospital not long ago, 
where she had gone to have an operation. 
I asked her mother about her. She said, 
“She is doing well, but I am so afraid it is 
going to leave a scar.” She did not want an 
ugly mark on her little girl’s pretty face 
when she was well. We none of us like 
scars. But it all depends on what sort of 
scars they are. There are some scars that 
tell of noble, brave deeds. 

There was a young English soldier who 
was fearfully wounded. For many long 
weeks he lay in the hospital. At last he 
was well and ready to go back to the front. 
But there was a great scar on his face. 
He wrote a letter home to his mother in 
which he said: “Mother, I have good news 
to tell you. I have a scar on my face. Both 
of my brothers have been wounded, and now 
I have been wounded, too. When you see 
this scar you will know that your youngest 
boy was willing to give his life for his coun- 
66 


Scars 67 

try.” He was proud of that scar and I 
know his mother was proud of it, too. 

But there are other scars that are not so 
honorable, of which we ought to be ashamed. 

There was once a little boy whose name 
was Robert. Robert had a bad temper and 
very often was unkind to his little brother. 
One day his father set up a post in front of 
the house, and said, “Robert, this is your 
post. Every time you lose your temper, or 
are unkind, we will drive a nail in the post. 
And whenever you go through a half day 
without being naughty we will pull out a 
nail. If you are good a whole day we will 
take out two nails. 

Robert thought this was a fine plan, and 
he made up his mind that he would not have 
any nails driven into that new post. For a 
whole day he was good. But the second day 
he forgot himself, and had two nails driven 
into the post. When night came he was 
ashamed, and determined to have them taken 
out to-morrow. But the next day was rainy 
and they had to stay in, and you know how 
hard it is for children to be good when they 
have to stay around the house all the time. 
That day he had three more nails driven into 
the post. Then Robert thought, “What is 
the use of trying to be good. I may as well 
give it up.” So he didn’t try and before long 
that post was a strange sight. It was full 


68 For the Children’s Hour 

of nails, and every time he looked at it Rob¬ 
ert became a little more ashamed. You see 
his father had put it where he would see it 
every time he went out of the house. He 
thought, “I will try once more to get some 
of those nails out.” He tried and the first 
day out came two nails. The next day one 
more came out. The third day he forgot and 
they had to drive one more in. But Robert 
kept on and before long every nail was out. 
When the last one had been pulled out the 
father said, “My boy, look at your post, 
every nail is gone. I believe you have over¬ 
come your temper.” Then Robert saw some¬ 
thing he had not noticed before. “Father,” 
he said, “the nails are gone, but the nail- 
holes are there still.” “Yes,” said his fa¬ 
ther, “they are there to remind you that you 
must be very careful.” 

God is very good. He forgives our sins 
if we are sorry and ask for forgiveness. But 
He leaves the scars of the sins there to re¬ 
mind us in time to come that we must be 
very careful. 

Once I saw a man who had led a very 
wicked life. He had been converted how¬ 
ever, and was doing all that he could to 
atone for the wrongs he had done. His right 
hand was gone. It had been lost when he 
was doing something that he ought not to 
have done. He used to hold up the arm from 


Scars 69 

which the hand was gone and say, “There is 
one of the scars that sin left me.” 

God forgave Jacob’s sins but he limped 
all the rest of his life. 

Paul, the good apostle Paul, was wicked 
in his youth and did many things of which 
he was very sorry afterward. Years after 
he said that God had left him a thorn in the 
flesh, lest he should become too proud. He 
had left the scar there to remind him to be 
careful and watchful against evil. 

Little Robert was not the only one who 
has trouble with nail-holes. When we sin, 
the sin may be forgiven, and it will be, if we 
go to Jesus, and ask forgiveness, but the 
scar will be there. It is God’s reminder to be 
very careful what we do, and what we say, 
and what we think. 


XVIII 


How to Make Hard Things Easy 

“Love never faileth.”—1 Cor. xiii. 3. 

Once there was a barn door that was very 
hard to move. It was one of those old fash¬ 
ioned doors we used to see in the country. 
It slid along on a track, and sometimes it 
was almost impossible to open it. At last it 
stuck fast and no one could move it. So 
they sent for a carpenter. He took it off, 
and put some oil in it, and then it moved 
so easily that you could have pushed it open 
with your little finger. It needed oil, that 
was all. 

There are many things in life that are 
like that barn door. They are hard. We 
need something to make them go, and I am 
going to tell you this morning what will al¬ 
ways make hard things easy. It is love. 

One night not long ago, a woman and a 
little boy were walking along Freemason 
Street, They were coming home from mar¬ 
ket. The woman was dressed in black. She 
is a widow and is very poor, and there is no 
one to help her but that little boy. She had 
her arms full of bundles and the little boy 
70 


How to Make Hard Things Easy 71 

was carrying a basket almost as big as him¬ 
self, and that was full too. Every few steps 
he set the basket down and rested. I heard 
the mother say, “That is a pretty heavy load, 
isn’t it, little man?” He replied, “No, it 
isn’t a bit heavy.” Do you know what it was 
that made that heavy basket seem light for 
the little boy? It was love. He loved his 
mother and anything that he did for her was 
easy. 

A little drop of oil will always make a 
machine run more easily, and a little love 
will make everything go better. 

There are some children who hate arith¬ 
metic. It is so hard, and they have so 
much trouble with it. And there are other 
children who love it, and always find it easy. 
It is not hard because they have learned to 
love it. If there is some lesson that is very 
hard for you, learn to love it and it will not 
be long before you will find it easy. 

There are some people whom we find it 
very hard to get along with. They are like 
that old barn door we were talking about. 
The more we do for them the worse they 
are. The trouble is they need a little love. 
Love them a little and show them that you 
love them, and you will be surprised to see 
how much easier it will be to get along with 
them. 


72 


For the Children’s Hour 


An automobile stopped on our street the 
other day, and they could not make it go. 
The engine was all right, but something had 
been forgotten. They had put in no cylin¬ 
der oil. 

Sometimes there is trouble in the house, 
or in school, or out on the playground, and 
when we come to look we find we have for¬ 
gotten to put the love in, and things won’t 
run very long without love, any more than a 
car will run without oil. 

Some one was telling of a young woman 
in Canada. She lived in a beautiful home 
and had everything that her heart could wish 
for. She decided that she wanted to be a 
missionary, and went out to China. After 
a few years one of her friends went to see 
her. She was living in a poor little native 
house, and her clothes were old and shabby. 
She worked very hard every day and had 
contracted a disease that made her suffer 
much of the time. But she was very happy. 
Her friend said to her, “I don’t see how you 
can stand these awful people, and this awful 
place and this life you are living.” The mis¬ 
sionary said, “It does not seem hard to me 
because I love them.” 

When things are hard, don’t forget to look 
and see if you do not need a little love. 


XIX 


God’s Care 

“He careth for you.”—1 Peter v. 7. 

One of the most beautiful and wonderful 
things about God is His care. He cares for 
and loves everything that He has made. 

The lilies are very lovely and very frag¬ 
rant. Jesus once said that God clothes them 
with their beauty and loves them every one. 
And the little birds, it does not seem to us 
as if God would have time to think of them, 
but Jesus said that not one of them falls to 
the ground that God doesn’t know about it. 
God cares for the little birds. When boys 
are tempted to be cruel to them, they ought 
never to forget that God knows and cares 
for the sparrows. 

Now, if God cares for the flowers and the 
birds, we may be very sure that He cares a 
great deal more for us. 

A few years ago the census taker came to 
your house and took the names of everyone 
in it. Everyone in the country was counted. 
No one, however small, was left out, and no 
one, not even the President, counted for 
more than one. We all have our names put 
73 


74 


For the Children’s Hour 


down in the government books in Washing¬ 
ton. So in God’s great book is the name of 
every one of ns. God cares for all, just as 
much for the littlest child here this morning 
as He does for the richest man in the United 
States. 

God cares when we are hungry and 
thirsty. Long ago there was a poor mother 
out in the desert with her little son. The 
water-bottle was empty, and the little boy 
was crying with thirst, and there was no 
spring or well nearby where they could get 
water. The poor mother thought that no 
one cared for her and that they would have 
to die of thirst. But God cared. He cares 
for and loves every little child who is suf¬ 
fering. He sent an angel and showed Hagar 
where she could find water for her little son 
to drink. 

God cares for us when we are thirsty and 
hungry, and He cares for us when we are 
tired. In one of the Psalms we read, “He 
giveth His beloved sleep.” When we are 
tired and cannot go a step further and 
everything goes wrong, then the Lord sends 
us sleep and when we wake up everything is 
all right again. 

And God cares for us too when we are in 
danger. I once read of a king who had a 
son who was going on a long journey. There 
were a great many robbers along the way 


God’s Care 


75 


he was to take, and his father was afraid 
that something might happen to him. So he 
called one of his bravest soldiers, and told 
him to follow along behind the young man, 
and to keep in the shadow so that he would 
not know that he was being followed, but to 
be ready if any evil should come near him. 

That is what God does for His children. 
They used to say that God sends an angel 
to guard and to watch every little child and 
to protect him from harm. He cares for 
and watches over every one of us. 

And God wants us to come to Him when 
we are in distress or trouble of any kind. 
He cares for us and He wants us to care 
for Him. 

Once there was a big hawk chasing a lit¬ 
tle swallow. He almost caught it too, but 
there was a window open nearby, and the 
little bird flew into the window right into 
the arms of a man who was sitting at his 
desk. He kept the little bird safe and the 
hawk flew away. 

Afterward that man wrote a hymn that 
we all know and love, a hymn that was sug¬ 
gested to him by the little bird that flew to 
him for safety: 

Jesus, Lover of my soul, 

Let me to Thy bosom fly, 

While the nearer waters roll, 

While the tempest still is high. 


XX 


The Giant Ferryman 

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
these, my brethren, ye have done it 
unto me."—M att. xxv. 40. 

Long ago in the land of Syria, according 
to the legend, there lived a man named 
Christopher. He was very tall and muscu¬ 
lar ; in fact he was the strongest man any¬ 
where. He vowed that he would only serve 
the mightiest being in the whole world. So 
he spent his life seeking the strongest mas- 
, ter. For a while he was in the service of a 
king, who was very powerful. But after a 
little he discovered that this king was dread¬ 
fully afraid of the devil. So he left the king 
and went to serve the devil. One day as he 
and Satan were walking along the road to¬ 
gether they came to a cross. When Satan 
saw it he began to tremble. Christopher 
concluded that Jesus must be stronger than 
Satan, so he decided that he would serve 
Jesus. But where was Jesus to be found? 
For a long time he looked for Him in vain. 
Then he met a hermit who told him about 
Jesus and he became a Christian. There 
was a swift, deep river not very far from 
76 


The Giant Ferryman 77 

there, and the hermit advised him he could 
serve Jesus by carrying people across that 
river on his back. He told him that when¬ 
ever he did a kindness for one who was poor 
and weak that Jesus would love him, and 
that some day He would come and speak to 
him. 

So Christopher built a house by the side 
of the river and gave all his time and 
strength to carrying people over the stream. 
The river was so swift that it would have 
swept away another man, but Christopher 
was very strong and went over easily. It 
was a great sight to see him carrying, some¬ 
times old men, sometimes children, some¬ 
times weak women over the river and put¬ 
ting them gently down on the other side. 

After a good many years had passed and 
Jesus had never once come, one evening 
Christopher was sitting in his house. It 
was very late and there was a great storm 
outside. He was sure that no one would 
want to go over the river that night, and 
he was getting ready to go to bed, when he 
heard a voice calling “Christopher.” He 
thought at first that it was the wind, but he 
heard it again, and then the third time. So 
he opened the door and looked out. It was 
as dark as could be, and before long he saw 
a little child standing there, and begging to 
be taken over the river. 


78 


For the Children’s Hour 


Without saying a word big Christopher 
put the little fellow on his shoulder and 
waded out into the river. At first the 
weight of the child was very light, but it 
became more heavy each step, until by the 
time he had reached the middle of the 
stream it was almost more than he could 
stand up under. But at last they reached 
the otlier side. Christopher set the little boy 
down on the bank and asked him who he 
was. He answered, “I am Jesus, and in 
carrying me, you have been carrying the 
sins of the whole world. You are a good 
and faithful servant. Go on serving me here 
as you have been doing and some day you 
will be with me in heaven.” 

So Christopher found Jesus at last. To 
the end of his days he helped Jesus by carry¬ 
ing people over that steep, swift river. When 
he died people called him “St. Christopher,” 
which means “Christ-bearer.” 

Christopher served Jesus by bearing other 
people’s troubles and burdens. We can all 
serve him in the same way. At one of our 
busy cross-streets one day there was an old 
woman with a heavy basket waiting for a 
chance to cross the street. There was a 
great amount of heavy traffic that day and 
she was afraid to start with her load. All 
at once there came a boy and lifted her bas- 


The Giant Ferryman 79 

ket and helped her over. She was so thank¬ 
ful. He had carried her burden for her. 

Not far from here there is a poor woman 
who has been lying in bed for many years. 
She is very lonely and the days are very 
long. There are some young girls who go 
every week and read to her. They are help¬ 
ing bear her burden. 

There are burdens for all of us to bear, 
and we can see Jesus as Christopher did if 
we will give our lives to bearing them. 


XXI 


The Tide 

“As the sea causeth his waves to come up.” 

—Ezekiel xxvi. 3. 

There are many interesting things in the 
world about us. One of the most wonderful 
of all is the tide. Sometimes when you walk 
across the Yarmouth Street bridge all you 
can see below the bridge is a river of black 
mud, and you say that the tide is out. The 
next time you cross it perhaps it is full of 
water and you say the tide is in. What is it 
that makes the tides rise and fall like that? 
What is it that lifts all those millions and 
millions of tons of water all over the world 
twice every day? It is the moon. Perhaps 
at home you have a horse-shoe magnet. You 
know that if you hold that magnet near a 
little piece of steel, it will be drawn toward 
the magnet. The moon in the same way at¬ 
tracts the earth, and this is what causes the 
tides to rise. 

Once I heard a man say, “I never stand 
on the seashore and hear the roar of the 
waves, and see the tide coming and going 
that I do not think of God.” 

80 


The Tide 81 

Let us see what it is about the tide that 
makes people think of God. 

For one thing the tide reminds us of the 
love of God. Sometimes, when you go walk¬ 
ing on the beach after a storm, it is covered 
with sea weed, and wreckage, and filth of all 
sorts. Then the tide comes up, and when it 
has gone down the beach is as clean and 
white as a floor. That is what God’s love 
does. 

When our hearts and lives are filled with 
sin and mistakes the love of God, like a 
great tide, sweeps in and washes it clean 
again. 

Then the tide reminds us of God’s anger, 
too. Near where I used to live there was 
a sand bar that was bare when the tide was 
low, but was covered when the tide was 
high. There were two boys, who were fond 
of playing on the shore. They had been told 
by their father that they were never to go 
out to that sand bar. The tide might rise 
and catch them. One day they saw that no 
one w T as looking, so they went out to the bar. 
There were a great many interesting things 
out there, and they forgot all about the tide. 
All at once they looked and saw that the sea 
had risen and cut them off from the shore. 
There was no way to get back. It was too 
far for them to swim, and if someone had 
not seen and come for them, they would have 


82 For the Children’s Hour 


been drowned. When we do wrong God’s 
anger and punishment come very quickly, 
just as the tide came up and caught these 
boys who had disobeyed their father. 

Then the tide reminds us of the power of 
God. Long ago the Danes came over and 
conquered England. It seems strange to 
think of the Danes mastering England, but 
they did it many years ago. One of them 
became king of England. His name was 
Canute and he was a very wise and very 
good king. His servants who loved him 
very much, thought that there was nothing 
that King Canute could not do. They flat¬ 
tered him, and boasted so much about him 
that he determined to teach them a lesson. 
He ordered them to carry his throne down 
to the seashore at low tide. By and by the 
tide began to rise. It came nearer and 
nearer. King Canute ordered it to go back. 
But the more he commanded the faster the 
water came on, till it wet their feet and they 
all had to run up to higher ground. Then 
the king said to his servants, “Remember, 
there is only One who is all-powerful and 
that is the God whom the sea obeys.” 

He made the waves obey Him, and He can 
keep you when you are in trouble. Never 
forget that. 


XXII 

The Stone Face 

‘‘We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is . >f 

1 John iii. 2. 

Did you ever hear the story of “The Great 
Stone Face?” In one of the states of New 
England there is a lovely valley, full of vil¬ 
lages and farms. At the head of the valley 
there is a gigantic pile of rocks, and as you 
look at them from the distance they are ex¬ 
actly like a human face. There are dark 
eyes, and a high forehead, and a smiling 
mouth. It is altogether a very fine, beau¬ 
tiful face. There was a legend connected 
with this valley, which has come down from 
the days of the Indians of long ago. The 
legend promised that some day a man would 
come to that valley, who would be the great¬ 
est and the best man of his time, and they 
would know him, because his face would be 
exactly like that of the stone face. 

For many years the people watched for 
some one to come who looked like the face 
in the rocks. There were many who came 
who they thought 1 oked like the image. 
There was a very rich man whose face they 
heard was something like it, but when they 
83 


84 For the Children’s Hour 


looked closely they found that his was a 
very selfish face. Then there came a great 
soldier. He was something like it, too, but 
his features were too hard. And there was 
a statesman. For a long while they thought 
that perhaps he might be the one, but he 
too had something in his face that was evil. 

One day a little child was born in the val¬ 
ley. When he could walk his mother took 
him out and showed him the great stone 
face away off there at the head of the valley. 
As the boy grew older he liked to go and 
watch it. He became a man after a while 
and built a little cottage, where he could 
sit in the evening after the work was done 
and see the stone face. He was a very 
good man, gentle and unselfish and thought¬ 
ful of others, and every one loved him. Years 
passed by, and he was an old man. One day 
there came to the valley a stranger. He had 
heard about the stone face and wanted to 
see it. He stopped at the cottage of the old 
man and they went out together to look at 
it. The stranger gazed at the stone face, 
and then at the face of the old man, and he 
saw that they were exactly alike. At last 
the legend had been fulfilled, and a man had 
lived with a face like that of the stone face, 
and he was the best man of his time. He 
had looked at the stone face so often and so 
long that he had become like it. 


The Stone Face 


85 


This makes us understand what our text 
means. Those who think about Jesus, and 
read about Him, and love Him, will by and 
by come to be like Him. 

We become like the things that we think 
about and see oftenest. I once heard of a 
boy who ran away and went to sea. His 
mother couldn’t understand why he had 
gone. She had never talked about the sea. 
She did not know that he had ever read a 
book about it. The day after he had left she 
went into his room, and there she saw some¬ 
thing that made her know why he had gone. 
There was a picture of a ship hanging be¬ 
fore his bed. It had been there ever since 
he was a little boy. It was the first thing 
that he saw every morning, and the last 
thing that he looked at before he went to 
sleep at night. He had thought about that 
ship, and dreamed about the sea, till he had 
gone to be a sailor. 

This is one reason why we ought to be so 
careful about our companions, and the books 
that we read, and the things that we look 
at and think about. We grow by and by to 
be like them. 

The best thing for any of us to strive for 
is to be like Jesus, and to be like Him we 
must think of Him, and love and obey Him. 


XXIII 


Digging For Treasure 

‘‘If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as 
for hid treasure/ * —Proverbs ii. 4. 

There are thousands of men who make 
their living digging for treasure. They go 
down, sometimes for thousands of feet, into 
the mines to get the gold and silver and cop¬ 
per that is hidden there. God has stored 
away many rich and wonderful things in 
this earth of ours hut we must work very 
hard to get them. 

In this verse Solomon tells us about a 
kind of riches that we have to dig for. It 
is not gold, or silver, or copper. It is wis¬ 
dom. Solomon knew much about wisdom 
and we ought to listen carefully to every¬ 
thing that he has to say. 

First, what is wisdom? One boy says, 
“Wisdom is learning. I go to school to get 
wisdom.” Yes, that is true, but that is not 
all there is in wisdom. A girl says to> me, 
“Wisdom is doing what is right and not do¬ 
ing what is wrong.” Yes, that is wisdom. 
Solomon himself gives us a fine definition 
which everyone of us should remember, 
“The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom” 

He tells us that wisdom is a treasure. It 
is the greatest treasure that any one can pos- 
86 


87 


Digging for Treasure 

sess. Once I heard a father say, “I could 
leave my boy a few thousand dollars. But 
I am not going to do that. I am going to 
give him a good education. That is some¬ 
thing that no one can ever take from him.” 
That father was right. A good education 
is better than all the money he could leave 
him. It is the best sort of riches. 

And he tells us that wisdom is a hid- 
treasure. This means that it is hard to get. 
We have to work for it long and hard before 
it is ours, as the miner has to dig, and labor 
before he finds the silver or gold that he is 
seeking. 

Have you heard the story of Theseus, the 
son of the king of Athens? Theseus lived 
with his mother in the country, while his fa¬ 
ther lived at court away off in Athens. The¬ 
seus’ mother used to tell him about his brave 
father and the little boy would say, “Why 
cannot I go and see my father in Athens?” 
His mother took him out to a great rock and 
told him that when he was able to lift that 
rock that he could go and see his father. 
Little boys think they are very strong, and 
Theseus took hold of the rock and tried to 
move it. Of course it did not budge, and 
then his mother told him that it would be 
many long years before he could ever hope 
to lift it. 

But almost every day the little fellow 


88 For tKe Children’s Hour 


would go there where the rock was, and put 
his hands under it and try. Years passed 
and he became a sturdy boy. He asked his 
mother if she did not think it was now about 
time for him to go to Athens. “No,” she 
said, “Not till you have lifted the stone, and 
you are not strong enough yet.” He went 
and tried, and thought he saw the ground 
begin to crack a little around the stone. But 
he wasn’t really moving it. So for a little 
he did not try any more. He worked hard 
and did his duty till he was a young man. 
Then he came to his mother and asked her 
if he could go to Athens. She answered, 
“Yes, I will consent if you will lift the 
stone.” He put his hands under it, and 
struggled with all his might, and slowly the 
earth began to break and the stone came up. 
He had lifted it at last. His mother said, 
“Look under the stone.” He looked, and 
there was a casket and in the casket was his 
father’s sword. When he was a baby his 
father had put the sword there, and covered 
it with that great rock, and promised when 
his boy was strong enough to lift the rock 
he could have the sword, and come to rule 
with him in Athens. 

So try to remember that our Father in 
heaven has many precious things hidden 
away for us if we will work and persevere 
till we win them. 


xxiy 


Messengers 

“I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles.” 

Acts xiii. 47. 

There is no reading better for children 
than good missionary books. Many of the 
missionaries are heroes and heroines of the 
finest kind, and the stories of their lives 
are very exciting. One of the best is the 
Life of John G. Paton, the missionary to 
the New Hebrides. When Dr. Paton went 
to the New Hebrides the natives were sav¬ 
age cannibals, and he tells ns many thrilling 
things about his life among them. One is 
the story of the well that he dug. In the is¬ 
land of Aniwa where Dr. Paton lived there 
was no spring or well. The only fresh water 
the people had came from the rain. They 
had a rainy season that lasted from Decem¬ 
ber to April, when there was more water 
than they needed. The rest of the year there 
was no rain and very little water to drink. 
Sometimes the only fresh water anywhere 
was the juice of the cocoanuts that grew on 
the trees on the island. So very often there 
was suffering and death because they had 
no water. 


89 


90 For the Children’s Hour 

Dr. Paton determined that he would try 
to dig a well. Aniwa was a coral island 
and he did not know whether there was 
fresh water underneath the ground or not, 
but he made up his mind that he would 
find out. So he started to work. The na¬ 
tives saw him digging the hole and they 
asked him what he was doing. He said he 
was trying to find water. They said to him, 
“Water no come from the earth. It come 
from the sky.” He told them that in his 
country they got water out of the ground. 
They couldn’t believe it. They thought that 
Missi, as they called Dr. Paton, had gone 
crazy, that the heat had affected his mind 
and he did not know what he was doing. So 
they watched him with great sorrow, for 
they loved him and were so sorry that he 
was crazy. There was not one of them who 
would help him. He had to go down into 
the hole and fill his bucket, and then climb 
out and pull it up and empty it. They 
would not even haul up the dirt for him. 
At last after weeks of hard work he got down 
about thirty feet. The ground began to be 
moist and he knew that he was near water. 
But it was about the sea level and he was 
afraid that it would be salt water, and all 
his work would be for nothing. He went 
home that night and prayed so hard that the 
water would be fresh. The next day he 


Messengers 91 

called the chiefs and told them that before 
the day was over he would give them a drink 
of fresh water out of the hole. “Poor old 
Missi,” they said to themselves, “he is more 
crazy than ever.” 

Dr. Paton went down into the well and 
started to dig again. After a little the 
water came rushing into the bottom. He 
fell on his knees and tasted it and it was 
fresh. He stayed there on his knees and 
thanked God and then called the people and 
gave them all a drink. Now they knew that 
Missi was not crazy and they were so glad 
for they loved him. That is the way they 
came to have fresh water all the year around 
on Aniwa, and if you ever visit that little 
island, you will see there the well that Dr. 
Paton dug. 

Dr. Paton was a missionary, and the word 
“missionary” means messenger. A messen¬ 
ger is one who is sent on an errand. God 
has made us all, boys and girls, His mes¬ 
sengers. He wants us in school, and at 
home, and wherever we are, to make people 
know about Him. We do not have to go 
away off to some heathen land to be mis¬ 
sionaries. That is the finest and noblest 
way to be a missionary. But we can be His 
messengers here. We can give part of our 
money to missions, and we can bring others 
to church and Sunday school, and we can 


92 For the Children’s Hour 


always, when we say our prayers, ask God 
to save the boys and girls who have never 
heard about Him. 

A messenger must never forget his mes¬ 
sage. Once I went into a business man’s 
office and there was a new boy there. I said, 
“Where is your other boy?” “O,” he said, “I 
had to let him go. He was too trifling. If 
I sent him out with a message, sometimes 
he would tuck it into his pocket and forget 
about it, and spend half the afternoon play¬ 
ing marbles.” 

God has given us a message to deliver. 
Let us be sure that we do not tuck it away 
and forget about it. 


XXV 


What It Costs to Be Stingy 

li There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing.” 

Proverbs xiii. 7. 

There are some people who are not gen¬ 
erous because it costs too much. You have 
an apple, and there is some other boy who is 
looking at that apple. He would like to 
have some of it. And you would like to be 
generous, but if you gave him half of it you 
would only have half left for yourself. So 
maybe you say to yourself, “It costs too 
much to be generous. I will keep it all for 
myself.” 

Some people would be willing to help 
others and do good, but when they think of 
what they would have to give up to do it, 
they decide that it costs too much. 

But, while it costs something to be gen¬ 
erous, it costs far more to be stingy and 
selfish. Let us think what it costs a boy or 
girl, or man or woman, to be selfish. 

First it costs our love and sympathy. One 
of the most precious things that you have is 
your loving, sympathetic heart. Once we 
had a Summer when there was very little 

93 


94 For the Children’s Hour 


rain. There was no water for the trees and 
plants. That Fall, when we went to gather 
the nuts they looked all right, but when we 
cracked one of them, the kernel inside was 
worthless. The drought had dried it up. 
It is unselfishness that waters the heart. 
When a person becomes selfish, his love and 
sympathy dry up like the kernel of that nut. 
That is the first thing that we lose when we 
are stingy. We lose our sympathy. 

Then, second, we lose our happiness. Did 
you ever know a stingy person who was 
happy? Did you ever see a generous, 
thoughtful boy or girl who was not happy? 
No! you never have, and I can tell you the 
reason. Stinginess always brings unhap¬ 
piness. 

Charles Dickens tells us the story of Mr. 
Scrooge. He was very stingy and very 
mean. He never did anything for anyone 
else if he could help it, and never gave away 
anything. He had gone on in this way till 
there was very little good in him, and you 
know when a person hasn’t any good in him¬ 
self, he never can see much good in others. 
He believed that everyone else was a hum¬ 
bug. Whenever he heard of someone doing 
a kind deed, he said, “humbug.” And his 
stinginess had made him very unhappy. He 
was very rich, but with all his money he was 


What It Costs to Be Stingy 95 

the saddest old man in London, for stingi¬ 
ness never brings happiness. 

The night before Christmas Old Scrooge 
had some dreams. He dreamed of what 
Christmas was long ago, when he was a lit¬ 
tle boy, and was happy, before he had be¬ 
come so stingy Then he dreamed of what 
Christmas was then, and of what it would 
be by and by, if he kept on getting more 
selfish and unhappy every day. At last he 
woke up. That very day he started out to 
be kind and thoughtful and generous to 
others, and he had the first happiness he 
had known for years. This is the second 
thing that stinginess takes away from us. 
It takes our happiness. 

Remember, too, that the people who are 
selfish and stingy never get the good of what 
they have. Not very far from Bingen, on 
the Rhine, in Germany, there is a castle that 
they call “The Mouse Tower.” There is a 
story of that tower that has come down to 
us from long ago. There was a great fam¬ 
ine in Germany and the people were starv¬ 
ing to death. In this castle lived a selfish, 
mean old bishop. He had great stores of 
grain in the castle but he would not give 
any of it to the starving people. They 
came and begged him to sell them some, 
but he kept it all for himself. 

They tried to break into his granaries, and 


96 For the Children’s Hour 


some of them did get in, and when they were 
once inside the cruel old bishop had them all 
killed. God had to punish him for his self¬ 
ishness and cruelty, and this is the way He 
did it. He sent thousands and thousands of 
mice down the river to the island where the 
bishop’s castle stood. The mice swam the 
moat, and climbed the walls, and ate the 
grain, and when they had finished the grain 
they ate the bishop, and that was the end 
of his selfishness. Selfishness always has a 
bad ending, so it is better to learn to be un¬ 
selfish and generous. 


XXVI 


A Tattle-Tale 

“Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer .* 9 
—Leviticus xix. 16. 

Jesus is the only Man who ever lived a 
perfect life. The best of people have had 
their faults. Joseph, whose story we like 
to read so much in the Old Testament, had 
a serious weakness. He was a tattle-tale. 
If he saw his brothers doing something, that 
he thought they ought not to do, off he 
would run to his father and tell it. This did 
no good, and it made his brothers very 
angry. At last they could stand it no 
longer, and said to one another, “We will 
have to do something to this little tattle¬ 
tale brother of ours or there will never be 
any peace in the family.” So they sent him 
off into the land of Egypt. They did very 
wrong to do this, and the time came when 
they were very sorry, but Joseph ought not 
to have been so ready to tell tales about 
others. 

Nobody likes a talebearer. Solomon once 
said, “The words of a talebearer are as 
wounds.” That is, the words of a tattle-tale 
97 


98 For the Children’s Hour 


always hurt some one. There are some peo¬ 
ple who like nothing quite so much as to 
find out something had about some one else 
and then go and tell it to every one they see. 

There are three reasons why we ought not 
to tell tales about others. First, because it 
will hurt ourselves. There was once a little 
girl who came running in to her mother and 
said, “Mother, I want to tell you something 
awful that Mary told me about Catherine.” 
Her mother said, “Now before you tell me 
there are three questions that I would like 
to ask you. Do you know that this story is 
true?” The little girl answered, “No, I don’t 
know that it is true. Mary says that it is.” 
“The second question,” said her mother, “is 
this. Do you think that it is kind to tell 
something that you are not sure is true?” 
The little girl said, “No, it isn’t.” “And the 
third question is, would you like to have 
someone say such a thing about you?” 

That little girl didn’t tell her story and 
she never told it to anyone after that. 

When people tell stories about others that 
they have heard it is not long before others 
begin to tell stories about them. 

The second reason why we ought not to 
tell tales about others is because it hurts 
everyone we tell, as well as the person we are 
talking about. The boy or girl who tells 
stories about others is like a child going 


A Tattle-Tale 


99 


around with the measles or the scarlet fever, 
giving it to everyone he meets. If you take 
a disease like that, the doctor comes and 
looks at you, and then he orders you to stay 
away from other people, and puts a card on 
your house, so that no one else will come 
near you. If you have scarlet fever a red 
card is put on the house, and if you have 
measles it is white, and blue for diph¬ 
theria. It would be a good thing if the doc¬ 
tors, when they find a child who goes around 
telling bad tales about others, would shut 
him in his house and put a big black card on 
it, so no one could come and see him till 
he gets over it. 

There is another reason why we ought not 
to tell tales. God doesn’t like it. God said 
long ago, “Thou shalt not go up and down 
as a talebearer.” He meant that for us as 
much as for the people who lived in the time 
of Moses. 

God knows many bad stories about every¬ 
one of us. We are all hoping that he will 
forgive us and forget them. But He is not 
going to forgive and forget unless we are 
willing to forgive and forget the bad things 
that we hear about others. 


XXVII 


“I Forgot” 

* 1 Son, remember. ’ ’— Luke xvi. 25. 

When Joseph was a very young man he 
was shut up in prison for a crime which he 
had not committed. After he had been there 
for a while he did a great favor for one of 
the other prisoners, so that this man was 
released and went away a free man. 

Before he left the prison Joseph made 
him promise that he would speak to the king 
about him and have him released. But the 
man forgot all about his promise and poor 
Joseph had to stay in the prison two years 
more. All he could say was “I forgot.” 

A man pulled some letters out of his 
pocket one day and said, “There, my wife 
gave me those letters to mail a week ago 
and here they are. I forgot.” 

How often we hear children say when 
they have done wrong, “I forgot.” Once I 
knew a boy whose father had told him never 
to leave the gate open. The boy promised to 
remember, but he forgot and left it open, 
and some cattle came and destroyed every¬ 
thing in his father’s fine garden. Do you 
100 


“I Forgot” 


101 


believe that his father excused him because 
he said, “I forgot”? No, indeed. He ought 
to have remembered. God has given us our 
memories that we may remember the things 
that are told us, and if we do not use them, 
and forget everything He has told us, we 
cannot expect Him to excuse us. 

We ought none of us ever to forget our 
fathers and mothers, and the good and wise 
things that they teach us. Did you ever 
hear the story of Theseus and the Minotaur? 
Theseus was the son of the king of Athens. 
On the Island of Crete was a horrible mon¬ 
ster called the Minotaur. Every year he 
carried off and destroyed a number of the 
finest young men and women in Athens. No¬ 
body knew who was to be next and every¬ 
body was dreadfully afraid of him. Theseus 
was very brave, and asked his father if he 
could go to the Island of Crete and try to 
kill the monster. The king did not want 
him to go. He was afraid that Theseus 
might be killed and then he would have no 
son to be king after him. But Theseus 
begged so hard that he let him go. But 
there was one promise he had to make. The 
ship on which he was to go had black sails. 
The king made Theseus promise that if he 
killed the Minotaur that he was to change 
the sails to white when he came back. If 
he was killed the ship was to come with the 


102 For the Children’s Hour 


same black sails. So Theseus sailed away, 
He went to Crete and had a terrible fight 
with the Minotaur and at last he killed him. 
Then he went on board the ship to go home. 
Bjut he was so full of happiness that he for¬ 
got all about his promise to his father. He 
left the old black sails up, instead of chang¬ 
ing them to white as he had promised. Away 
there in Greece the king was watching the 
sea for a sail. All at once he saw a ship 
coming. The sails were black. He thought 
his son had been killed, and he was so 
grieved that he fell over into the sea and 
was drowned. When Theseus reached the 
shore he found that he had killed his father 
by his forgetfulness. 

There are boys and girls who are wound¬ 
ing and grieving their fathers and mothers 
every day by forgetting the promises that 
they have made and the wise things that 
have been taught them. 

When Paul wrote to Timothy he said, 
“Remember Jesus Christ,” Paul knew that 
Timothy would be tempted to say many 
things that were wrong and to do many 
things that he ought not, and so he told 
aim to remember Jesus Christ, When we 
remember Him we can’t say bad words and 
do wrong things. 


XXVIII 


The Rainbow 

“I will set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a 
token of the covenant between me and 
the earth.' ’ —Genesis ix. 13. 

Every little child likes to go out after a 
shower and look for the rainbow. The 
Greeks and Romans who lived long ago 
called the rainbow “Iris,” and worshipped 
it. They thought that “Iris” was the mes¬ 
senger of God to the earth. 

The Jews too had a pretty story of the 
rainbow. They used to tell the children that 
it was a band that connected earth and 
heaven, and when they saw it they would 
know that heaven was not very far away. 

What is the rainbow, and what does it 
mean? Our text tells us that it is “a token 
of a covenant.” That means that it is put 
there to remind us of a promise. 

Once there was a man who went down the 
street with a little piece of ribbon in his 
button-hole. One of his friends met him and 
said, “What is that ribbon there for?” “O,” 
said he, “when I left home this morning I 
promised my wife that I would get some- 

103 


104 For the Children’s Hour 


thing for her. She was so afraid that I 
would forget that she put that ribbon there 
to remind me of it.” That little piece of 
ribbon was “the token of a covenant.” It 
was to remind him of his promise. 

So God put that beautiful ribbon that we 
call the rainbow in the sky to remind Him 
of His promise to us. Let us see what it 
means and what God has promised through 
the rainbow. 

First, it is the promise of God’s mercy. 
Nearly five thousand years ago the world 
had become so wicked that God sent a great 
flood and destroyed every living thing on 
the whole earth, except Noah and his family, 
and the birds and animals that went with 
them into the ark. 

When it was all over the people were 
afraid that another awful flood might come 
and destroy them too, so God promised them 
that there would never be another like that. 
And to show them that He would never for¬ 
get His promise He put the lovely, many- 
colored rainbow in the sky. 

If you will look sharp some Summer after¬ 
noon, when the storm has passed and the 
sun has come out again, and shines on the 
raindrops falling from the trees, you will see 
the rainbow reaching across the sky. 

There was a boy once who ran away from 
home. He had been a very bad boy, but his 


The Kainbow 


105 


mother loved him. She always hoped and 
prayed that he would come back. She lived 
in a little cottage by the sea, and every night 
she took a lamp and put it in the window 
so that the light could be seen out over the 
waves. She did it, she said, to show her boy 
if he ever came back, that she had forgiven 
him and was waiting for him. 

Did you ever look down Brooke Avenue 
at night and see those two lights, one red and 
the other green, in front of the Naval Y. M. 
C. A? They are there to tell the sailors who 
come ashore that no matter how far they 
have been away, there is a welcome and 
a home for them there. 

God put the rainbow in the clouds to show 
us that there is always welcome and mercy 
and love for us when we have sinned, if we 
will come home to Him. 

Then the rainbow reminds us that in 
everything that God does there is the same 
loving care for us. There are seven colors 
in the rainbow. Count them the next time 
you see one. They are red, orange, yellow, 
green, violet, indigo and blue. Those lovely 
colors are there in the sky all the time, but 
it takes the rain to bring them out so that 
we can see them. 

Children do not like to have it rain. They 
want to have fun and play. That rainbow 
reminds us that the things we do not like 


106 For the Children’s Hour 


often bring us the finest blessings that we 
have. We do not like the rain, but it is the 
rain that makes the flowers grow, and the 
grain, and the fruit, and fills the city reser¬ 
voir so that we have water to drink. 

We do not like to be sick, but it is when 
we are sick that we learn how much our 
fathers and mothers and brothers and sis¬ 
ters love us. 

It takes the rain to bring out the rainbow, 
and it takes trouble sometimes to make us 
know how much God loves and cares for us. 

When you see the rainbow remember that 
it means the promise of God’s mercy and 
God’s love. 


XXIX 


God’s Love For the Birds and 
Animals 

“ Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon 
a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of 
the mountains, and the wild beasts 
of the field are mine. ,; 

—Psalm 1. 10-11. 


Long ago, when Adam and Eve lived in 
the Garden of Eden, they were not afraid 
of the animals, and the animals were not 
afraid of them. The tigers were as gentle 
and harmless as kittens; and lions ate out 
of Adam’s hand, and the great buffaloes 
were as tame as cows. But one day Adam 
and Eve sinned. They began to dislike God 
and to be afraid of Him. And when they 
fell out with God they began also to hate 
and fear the animals, and the animals be¬ 
gan to hate and fear them. That is always 
true. The man who does not love God is 
cruel and unkind to the birds and animals. 

From that day, man, instead of being the 
best friend the animals have, has become 
their worst enemy. I remember hearing my 
father telling of the millions of wild pigeons 
that used to fly north every year. Now 
107 


108 For the Children’s Hour 


there is not one left. They have all been 
killed by the hunters. The largest and fin¬ 
est bird that ever lived in the northern hemi¬ 
sphere was the great auk. Hundreds of 
years ago there were vast flocks of these 
birds. But the last one was killed and there 
will never be any more. 

Once there were fine herds of hundreds of 
thousands of buffaloes roaming over our 
western plains. In one of our national parks 
there are a few left. All the rest have been 
slaughtered. When I was a small boy 
nearly every woman had a seal-skin coat, but 
the pretty little seals have almost all been 
killed and very soon there will be no more. 
It must make God very angry when He sees 
how men have destroyed the beautiful things 
that He has made. God made all the ani¬ 
mals and the birds and He loves every one 
of them. Jesus said, “Are not two sparrows 
sold for a farthing, and not one of them fall- 
eth to the ground without your Father.” 
Sparrows were so cheap in the time of Jesus 
that you could buy eight of them for a 
penny, but Jesus says that God knows and 
cares for every one of them. 

Two small boys one day were shooting 
with an air rifle at a small sparrow on a 
tree. They shot many times, but could not 
hit it. At last one of them said, “I think 
God must be taking care of that sparrow.” 


God’s Love for the Birds 109 


Yes, he was right. God cares for the spar¬ 
rows and when we are cruel to them He 
knows and remembers. 

Then, we should be kind to the birds and 
animals because they are so ready and will¬ 
ing to love us if we will let them. 

There was a prominent business man liv¬ 
ing in the suburbs of one of our great cities 
a few years ago. He used to ride out to his 
home on the train every evening. He had a 
fine, big, setter dog that loved him very 
much. Every evening, from the big house 
on the hill, the dog would hear the whistle 
of the train, and run down to the station to 
yneet his master. One day the man died. 
The poor dog could not understand that his 
master was gone, and every evening he 
would go down to the train as he had always 
done. When no one came he would trot off 
home, lonely and sad. After a while he 
would not eat and became very weak, but 
every night the faithful animal dragged him¬ 
self down to meet that train. After a few 
weeks he was found dead. He had died of a 
broken heart. When dumb creatures can 
be so faithful and true to us, we ought to be 
kind and gentle with them. 

Some one tells of seeing a little boy pull¬ 
ing a beetle apart. He was only a thought¬ 
less little boy. He did not know that he 
was making the poor beetle suffer. His 


110 For the Children’s Hour 


mother was sitting there and saw it all. 
She ought to have told him not to make any¬ 
thing suffer, but she did not say a word. 
Some years after, the same man was visiting 
in this home again. The mother said to 
him, “I don’t know what is the matter with 
my boy. He is so cruel. He does not seem 
to care how much pain he gives me.” That 
little boy began by being cruel to the beetle, 
and before long he was cruel to his mother. 
The boy or girl who is unkind to the birds 
and animals will by and by be unkind to 
every one. 

The only way to be kind and gentle is to 
try to love everything, even the smallest 
things that God has made. 


XXX 


Killed with Kindness 

“So the bands of Syria came no more into the land 
of Israel.' ’— 2 Kings vi. 23. 

We sometimes hear of people who were 
“killed with kindness.” This does not mean 
that they were really killed. It only means 
that their hate and anger were killed. Per¬ 
haps you know someone who is so hateful 
and unkind and disagreeable that every one 
has a hard time to get along with him. All 
at once some one says, “Let^ kill him with 
kindness.” Then they all begin doing kind 
things for him till he is ashamed and sorry; 
his anger and hate pass away, and he be¬ 
comes kind, too. 

Long ago in the land of Israel something 
like this happened. The Syrians had been 
fighting the Israelites, carrying off their 
boys and girls into slavery, burning their 
homes, and doing everything that they could 
to make them unhappy. One day a band of 
these Syrians came into the land, and the 
prophet Elisha prayed to the Lord, and they 
were all made blind, so that they did not 
know which way to turn. Then the prophet 
ill 


112 For the Children’s Hour 


led these blind Syrians into the very city 
where the king of Israel lived. When the 
king saw them he was very glad. He said, 
“Now, I will have my revenge on these men 
who have made me so much trouble. I will 
kill every one of them.” But the prophet 
said, “No, you won’t. You are going to give 
them a good dinner, and each one a new 
pair of shoes, and treat them to the very 
best of everything that you have. And when 
you have done that you are going to let them 
go back home safely, every one of them.” 

The king did not want to do it at first. It 
seemed like a very strange way to treat 
one’s enemies. But he did it. He let the 
men go home safely, after doing everything 
he could for their comfort. They went home 
and told the king of Syria how kind the 
king of Israel had been to them, and what 
royal good fellows those Israelites were, and 
the king of Syria decided that the war 
should stop. It had been killed by kindness. 

Over three hundred years ago, in 1588, a 
great Spanish fleet, called the Armada, 
started from Spain to conquer England. 
They were not only going to master England 
and Scotland; they were also hoping to 
destroy the Protestant religion and burn all 
the heretics. When they reached the North 
Sea there was a great storm and many of 
the fine ships were wrecked. 


Killed with Kindness 


113 


Early one morning there was a minister 
in his study in a little village on the coast of 
Scotland. All at once the door opened and 
the village constable came in. He told the 
minister, whose name was James Melville, 
that the night before a ship had been cast 
ashore near the village and two hundred and 
fifty Spaniards had been captured. He 
asked the minister what to do with them. 
“There is only one thing to do with them,” 
said James Melville. “We will show them 
what good Christians there are in Scot¬ 
land.” So they went and invited them to 
the church and made a feast for them and 
took care of them till they returned to 
Spain. We are told that when the admiral 
in command of that fleet reached home he 
went to see the king and begged him to have 
no more wars with the English and Scotch, 
who had been so kind to them. They had 
been killed with kindness. 

One of the best ways to master and over¬ 
throw an enemy is to disarm him. If you 
can take away his weapon you can do what 
you want with him. The easiest and surest 
way to take away the weapon of someone 
who is disagreeable and unkind is to be kind 
to him. This is what we mean by “killed 
with kindness.” It is the only kind of kill¬ 
ing that is not forbidden in the sixth com¬ 
mandment. 


XXXI 


Looking Where We Are Going 

“Walk circumspectly. 1 ’— Ephesians v. 15. 


A boy was sitting on the porch with his 
foot done up in bandages. Some one came 
by and asked him what was the matter. He 
said that he had stepped on a broken bottle 
and cut, his foot. Just then his mother spoke 
up and said, “That is the great trouble with 
Tommy. He never looks where he is going.” 

There are many boys and girls like 
Tommy. They do not look where they are 
going, and the first thing they know they are 
in trouble. We have a little text to-day that 
ought to interest such boys and girls. It is 
very short. “Walk circumspectly.” That 
sounds very hard, but it isn’t. It means: 
“Look where you are going.” 

Sometimes when you are starting out 
somewhere you hear your mother say to 
you, “Now mind and look where you are 
going.” A long, long time ago Paul, the 
great apostle, told the Christians that they 
were to look where they were going. That 
is very good advice for us, as well as for 
them. 


114 


Looking Where We Are Going 115 

We must look where we are going at 
school. A man was talking about his boy. 
He said, “I want him to go through gram¬ 
mar school and high school. But he does 
not like to study. He wants to stop and go 
to work and I may have to let him, for he 
will not study. 

A few years from now that boy will be 
looking for a better place and will not be 
able to get it because he does not know 
enough. If he will look ahead and see where 
the road he is traveling is leading him, he 
will be careful to take his father’s advice. 

Then we ought every one of us to look 
where we are going in the formation of our 
characters. It is very easy when we are 
children to form habits that we will never 
be able to break all our lives. 

A man one day was reading a book in a 
boat along the Niagara River. As he read 
the boat drifted loose and began to float 
down the river. He was busy with the book 
and did not notice it. All at once he looked 
up and saw that he was going fast toward 
the falls. He threw down the book and 
jumped for the oars. But the current was 
too swift. He could not stop the boat, and 
if help had not come he would have gone 
over the falls and lost his life. The trouble 
was that he did not look soon enough where 
he was going. 


116 For the Children’s Hour 


It is so easy for us to get into habits of life 
that will by and by carry us to ruin. The 
only way to guard against this is to look 
where we are going. When we kneel down 
every day we ought to ask God to show us 
the way to go, and if it is not the right way 
to tell us where He would have us go. 

There was once a man who was dying. He 
was an old man and was not a Christian. 
As the doctor came out of his room, he met 
old Sam, his colored servant, who had been 
with him for many years. He said, “Sam, 
do you know that your master is going on a 
long journey pretty soon?’* Sam said, “No, 
sah, I ain’t heard nothing of this. When 
Massa goes away he says to me, ‘Sam, get 
my clothes out. Sam, pack my bag.’ Old 
Massa ain’t said nuthin to me. If he’s goin, 
he ain’t ready.” 

The old man was going to die and he 
wasn’t ready. He had lived a long life and 
had never looked ahead to what comes 
when this life is over. 

There is another life after this one. It is 
a great thing when we are young to look 
ahead and get everything ready for that 
other life. “Remember now thy Creator in 
the days of thy youth.” “Look where you 
are going.” 


xxxir 


Hopefulness 

* 1 Hope thou in God.”— Psalm xlii. 11. 

We have often heard it said that the best 
time of life is the time when we are young. 
We are happy when we are young because 
we are hopeful. When we grow older some 
of us lose our hopefulness, and then our 
happiness is gone. 

The Greeks had a beautiful story about 
how Hope came into the world. There was 
a princess named Pandora. She was en¬ 
gaged to a prince named Epimetheus. When 
she was married, among her wedding pres¬ 
ents, was a little box from Jupiter, which 
she was to keep and never to open. That 
was a very queer kind of present. Suppose 
you were a bride and a box should be handed 
in by a messenger at the door, and you were 
asked never to open it. It would almost 
spoil the wedding, you would want to look 
into it so much. 

That was the way Pandora thought about 
it. She loved all her other presents, but she 
did want to see what was in that little box 
that Jupiter had given her. One day she 
117 


118 For! tlie Children’s Hour 


was all alone in the house. The box was on 
the mantel-piece. She thought more and 
more about it. “Surely,” she said to her¬ 
self, “it will not hurt if I take one little 
peek.” So she looked everywhere to be sure 
that no one was looking, then she took the 
box and opened it. The moment the lid was 
lifted, out flew thousands of little creatures, 
like a swarm of bees, and went off through 
the window. These little things that she let 
go when she opened the box were the trou¬ 
bles that torment people. That is the way 
trouble came into the world. While she was 
watching those little things fly away, her 
husband, Epimetheus, came into the room. 
He ran and closed the lid of the box just in 
time to prevent one little creature from get¬ 
ting away. That little thing’s name was 
Hope. He stayed with them always. 

The Greek mothers used to teach their 
children by that little story that when trou¬ 
bles are all around us, and everything else 
has left us that there is always Hope left. 

There was a man walking with some com¬ 
panions through a lonely forest. Somehow 
he became separated from his friends, and 
lost his way. After wandering around in a 
circle for a little he sat down in despair. He 
had lost his friends, and his way, and did 
not know in which direction to go. 

All at once his hand touched something in 


Hopefulness 119 

his pocket. He took it out. It was a com¬ 
pass. There was a little needle there that 
pointed straight to the north. He took that 
compass and followed the needle, and he 
was soon out of the forest. When every¬ 
thing else was gone the compass pointed out 
the way. 

There are times when everything goes 
wrong, when it seems as though we had lost 
everything, but there is One whom we al¬ 
ways have, and that is God. That is what 
David meant when he said, “Hope thou in 
God.” 

It is a great thing to be hopeful. And if 
we obey and love God we will never be trou¬ 
bled with hopelessness. In the Boer War a 
little English army was besieged in one of 
the cities of South Africa. One of the sol¬ 
diers was so hopeless that wherever he went 
he made the other soldiers hopeless, too, and 
they began to lose their courage. 

At last the commander saw what was go¬ 
ing on, so he had the man put in prison. It 
would not do in a time like that to have 
anyone around who had no hope. 


XXXIII 


Afraid of Lions 

“The slothful man saith, There is a lion without. I 
shall be slain in the streets.”— Proverbs xxii. 13. 

Solomon, I think, must have written this 
about a boy or a girl. Perhaps there was a 
little boy whose mother had told him to go 
to the spring and bring a pitcher of water 
for dinner. The little boy was playing and 
did not want to go. So he said, “O, mother, 
there is a big lion down there in the woods 
back of the spring, and I am afraid to go.” 
There was no lion there. The little boy only 
wanted an excuse not to go and bring that 
pitcher of water. 

It is strange what terrible things boys 
and girls can think of when they do not 
want to do something. Solomon calls these 
awful things that we think of lions. There 
are several kinds of lions. There are real 
lions. You have seen them in the circus, 
.with their sleepy eyes and their great, 
shaggy manes. Then there are stone lions, 
such as you sometimes see on the steps of 
some big buildings; and there are play 
lions, that little children have in the nurs- 
120 


Afraid of Lions 


121 


ery. But this is a different kind of lion. It 
is the Excuse Lion. When you offer an 
excuse to get out of doing something you 
ought to do, Solomon calls that a lion. 

Some of you when Sunday comes wake up 
and try to think what day it is. Then you 
remember that it is Sunday, and almost at 
once you begin to feel an awful pain in your 
head, or your tooth, or your stomach. When 
your mother comes in you tell her you are 
so sick, you do not believe you can go to Sun¬ 
day-school. If you have a sensible mother 
she will tell you to go along to Sunday- 
school, and you will feel better. And sure 
enough when you get home you are well. 
Now, you really did not have a pain at all. 
You wanted to stay home and play. It was 
one of those lions in the way. 

There are always so many of these lions 
around on Sunday morning. That is the 
worst day for this kind of lions. There was 
a woman in my congregation a long time 
ago. She never came to church, so I went to 
see her about it. She told me that she had 
such dreadful sick-headaches, that she just 
couldn’t come. 

The next day I saw her son-in-law. I said, 
“It is too bad about those headaches. 7 ’ 
“Yes , 77 he said, “They are very strange head¬ 
aches. She never has them except on Sun- 


122 For the Children’s Hour 


day morning, and she is always perfectly 
well when church is over.” 

Grown people are troubled with these 
lions as well as the children. If it is a little 
cloudy on Sunday morning there are some 
people who would never think of venturing 
out to church. No, indeed, it might rain. 
And they might get wet. And then they 
might take cold. And then something 
dreadful might happen. They say they 
would like to go to church, but there is that 
awful lion in the way. 

I sometimes think that the devil must keep 
a whole, big cageful of these lions and let 
them out Sunday mornings to scare people. 

Then there are boys and girls who want to 
be Christians, They know that they ought 
to love Jesus, and live the kind of life he 
wants them to live. But they are afraid. 
There is a lion in the way. Let me tell you 
what that lion is. They are fearful that 
some of the other boys and girls might make 
fun of them, and they are afraid of a little 
ridicule. 

The first thing that Samson did was to kill 
a lion. Do you remember that lion David 
killed? One of the first brave deeds of the 
Grecian Hercules was to slay a great lion, 
and one of the first things for boys and girls 
to do, if they are to be brave and true and 
strong, is to kill the Excuse Lion. 


XXXIV 


The Boy Who Thought That He 
Knew More Than His Father 

“The younger son took his journey into a far country.’ 7 

Luke xv. 13. 

Once some one asked Charles Dickens to 
name the greatest story in the world. 
“Dickens writes wonderful stories himself, 
so he ought to know what a great story is,” 
thought the man who asked him. Mr. Dick¬ 
ens answered, “The greatest story that was 
ever written is Jesus’ Parable of the Prodi¬ 
gal Son.” 

You have all read the story many times. 
It is about the boy who thought that he 
knew more than his father. This boy had a 
fine home, and plenty to eat, and kind 
friends, and a loving father. He had every¬ 
thing that was necessary to make a boy con¬ 
tented and happy. But he was not satisfied. 
He began to think it was too slow around 
there, and his father was too old-fashioned. 
He wanted to go out and see the world and 
have a good time. His father tried to keep 
him from going. He told him he would be 
sorry, that home was the best place for him. 

123 


124 For the Children’s Hour 


But the boy thought that he knew more 
than his father, and so at last the father let 
him go. 

For a long while the father didn’t hear 
anything of him. Then one day he looked 
off down the road and he saw the son com¬ 
ing. He was all in rags, and hungry and 
footsore, a most pitiful looking object. He 
had learned that father knew more than 
he did after all. 

There are so many boys and girls now like 
this young man. They think that they know 
more than their parents. Some of you boys 
have an idea that you could teach your fa¬ 
ther a great many things if he would only 
let you. You are wishing for the time to 
come when you can do as you please. 

There are some of the girls, too, who, 
when their mothers correct them, turn up 
their noses and stamp their feet. They have 
the idea that their mothers do not know 
much, and that they know pretty much all 
there is to know. 

It would have saved this young man, 
about whom Jesus spoke, plenty of trouble 
if he had listened to his father. It will spare 
you mistakes and regret if you will remem¬ 
ber always that your parents know all you 
know and much more besides. 

Suppose you had to travel through a 
lonely forest where there was no road. You 


He Knew More Than His Father 125 

would not know which way to go. You 
would be afraid to strike out alone for fear 
of being lost. But all at once a guide conies 
to you and says, “I have been through the 
forest many times. I will lead you through. 
I know the way.” But you say, “I don’t 
want you to lead me. I know more about it 
than you do. I am going to go alone.” So 
you refuse to go with the guide and start off 
by yourself, and before long you are lost, 
and in great distress and trouble. You 
would be very foolish to do that, wouldn’t 
you? Now, that is what boys and girls are 
doing when they think that they know more 
than their parents. 

Sometimes you make your parents very 
sad by not wanting to do what they wish you 
to do, and to be what they want you to be. 

Have you ever read “The Little White 
Bird,” that pretty story that J. M. Barrie 
wrote? If you have you remember Peter 
Pan, who had flown away from his home to 
play with the birds and fairies in Kensing¬ 
ton Gardens. His mother did not want him 
to go, but he thought that he knew more 
than his mother. At home she was breaking 
her heart because he was gone. One night 
he flew back, and heard his mother speaking 
of him in her sleep, and he knew how much 
she wanted him to come back. But he 
didn’t stay. He thought he would come 


126 For the Children’s Hour 


back some time later. But when he did it 
was too late. His mother’s window was 
shut. She was dead. I am sorry for the boy 
who thinks he knows more than his father, 
and the girl who thinks she knows more 
than her mother. Some day they are going 
to be sadder and wiser. 


XXX'V 


Good News 

e< As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from 
a far country/’—P roverbs xxv. 25. 


No one ever likes to carry bad news. 
There was a man who had been informed 
that one of his friends had been killed on 
the railroad. He was asked to go and break 
the news to the wife and daughters of the 
man who had been killed. He said that he 
started and when he came to the house he 
just couldn’t go in. He walked up and down 
in front a dozen times before he rang the 
bell. It is hard to tell bad news. 

But we are always glad and happy when 
we can be the bearers of good news. Every 
boy and girl ought to know the story of the 
Battle of Marathon. 

About twenty-five hundred years ago a 
great host of one hundred thousand Persians 
crossed over from Asia to Europe to con¬ 
quer Greece. The Greeks had only a little 
army of ten thousand men, but they were 
very brave. They waited till everything 
;was ready, and then they marched down out 
of the hills and attacked the Persians on the 
127 


128 For the Children’s Hour 

plain of Marathon. The Persians had ten 
times as many soldiers, but the Greeks were 
fighting for their homes and their wives and 
children, and it made every man equal to 
ten. The Greeks won a great victory. After 
the battle they wanted to send the news of 
the victory to Athens. There were no tele¬ 
phones, or telegraphs, or automobiles, or 
even mails in those days. So a young soldier 
put off his armor and ran all the way from 
Marathon to Athens, across the hills and the 
valleys, for twenty miles with the good news. 
Ever since that time young men have been 
trying to see if they could run twenty miles 
as fast as he did. But there are very few 
o ' them who can do it. It was the good news 
the young man carried that made his feet 
so swift. 

Do you know what the word “Gospel,” 
which we find so often in the New Testa¬ 
ment, means? It means “good news.” There 
is the gospel, that is, the good news, accord¬ 
ing to Matthew; then comes the gospel, the 
good news, according to Mark, and Luke, 
and John. Paul in his epistles had much to 
say to us about the “good news.” What is 
this good news? 

Once there was a boy who had done very 
wrong. His father had told him to go away. 
He did not want to have anything more to 
do with him. So the boy left home and for 


Good News 


129 


many years he never saw his father. But 
the father grew old and one day became very 
sick. He began to want to see his boy again. 
So he sent a message to tell him that he was 
forgiven, and to come home again. What 
good news it must have been to that boy, the 
best news that he had ever heard. 

That is what the gospel means. It is good 
news. We all do wrong. We sin every day 
that we live. People have always done 
wrong, and men thought that because of the 
wrong they had done that God hated them. 
Jesus came to bring the good news that God 
loves us. No matter how much we have 
sinned He loves us still, and wants us to 
come home and be with Him. 

This is the good news that He wants us to 
tell everyone else. That young man who 
ran from Marathon to Athens ran very 
swiftly because he was the bearer of good 
news. We ought to go swiftly with the story 
of Jesus, because it is the best news the 
world ever heard. 



Joseph 

‘‘Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children; 
and he made him a coat of many colors.” 

—Genesis xxxvii. 3. 

If I were to ask you all which of the chil¬ 
dren of the Old Testament you like best, I 
know that there are some of you would 
speak of David. And there are others who 
would tell me Samuel. But most of you, I 
am sure, would say that you like Joseph 
best of all. You all know the story of 
Joseph, so I am sure it is not necessary for 
me to tell you who he was, or where he lived, 
or how many brothers he had. If you do not 
know these things I hope that this afternoon 
you will read, or ask some one to read to 
you, all about Joseph, so that you will know 
before next Sunday. 

Boys and girls all have faults. There is 
not one of us who is perfect. Joseph was 
not different from other boys in this. He 
had some very serious faults. 

One of these was conceit. I am sorry to 
say that Joseph, who was such a good boy in 
many ways, was conceited. You remember 
poor little Cinderella, who lived with her 
130 


Joseph 131 

two step-sisters. They had all the pretty 
clothes, and the good things to eat, and the 
fine times, and sad little Cinderella had to 
sleep in the attic, and eat in the kitchen, and 
wear the old rags, that the others had cast 
off. She had a hard time of it till the fairy 
came and changed it all. 

Well, it was something like this with 
Joseph and his brothers. Joseph’s father 
loved him more than he did the rest, and all 
the nice things he gave him. A peddler came 
along one day with some beautiful cloth. 
Old Israel bought it and made a fine coat 
of it for Joseph, a coat like those that 
princes wore. His brothers had to wear the 
ugly skins of wild animals, and eat coarse 
food, and work hard, while Joseph had fine 
clothes and an easy time. All this made him 
conceited. He began to think that he was 
better than anyone else. He put on airs and 
began to strut around as though he owned 
the whole place. 

Haven’t you seen some little girls like 
that ? When they get a new bonnet or dress, 
they think they are too high and mighty to 
speak to anyone who hasn’t as grand things 
as they have. 

Conceit always makes people unpopular, 
and it was not long before Joseph’s brothers 
began to dislike him very much. 

There was another bad thing about Jo- 


132 For the Children’s Hour 


seph. I am very sorry to have to say such a 
thing about a nice boy, but he was a tattle¬ 
tale. Whenever he heard anything about 
his brothers he ran and told his father. 
That was very unnecessary. It didn’t do 
any good. It made his father sad and his 
brothers angry. There are some boys and 
girls that like to tell tales. They usually 
have a lonely time of it, for no one likes 
them. There are some grown people who 
never get over being tattle-tales. Whenever 
they hear something unkind and mean, they 
hurry and tell it to every one they know. 
There is a woman of that kind not very far 
from here. I heard a man say one day, “If 
she were to meet me on the street and ask 
me the time of the day, I wouldn’t tell her 
unless I had a witness there. She is an old 
tattle-tale.” 

There was one more fault of Joseph’s that 
I must tell you. He talked too much. You 
know when we lie down at night, we very 
often dream about the things we have been 
thinking about during the day. Joseph 
spent much of the day thinking how much 
better he was than his hard-working broth¬ 
ers, and then, when he went to sleep, he 
dreamed about it. He dreamed that they 
each had a sheaf. There were twelve of 
these sheaves. But his sheaf was the finest. 
It was the king-sheaf, and all the other 


Joseph 133 

sheaves had to worship it. Now it was not 
wrong for Joseph to have that dream. We 
can’t help what we dream, but he needn’t 
have gone the next morning and told it to 
his brothers. He knew that it would make 
them angry. He talked too much. That is 
a fault that we ought many of us to over¬ 
come. Before you say anything, ask your¬ 
self the question, “Is what I am going to 
say likely to hurt the feelings of some one 
else? If it is, then I will leave it unsaid.” 

After all I have said this morning you 
may think that Joseph was a bad boy. But 
all boys have faults. He was, with all his 
faults, a very fine boy, and he grew to be a 
fine man. Next week I hope to tell you some 
of the fine things about Joseph. 


XXXVII 


Joseph 

(1 So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God . 19 
—Genesis xlv. 8. 


When Joseph was young he was disagree¬ 
able and selfish, and we do not wonder that 
his brothers did not love him. But they 
ought not to have done what they did. 

They were off with the sheep in another 
part of the country, and one morning old 
Jacob sent Joseph to see what his brothers 
were doing. When they saw him coming, 
with his coat of many colors, they were 
angry. No doubt they thought that he 
wanted to spy upon them, and then go back 
and tell some more tales to his father. So 
they decided they would make way with 
him. Some of them wanted to kill him. But 
instead of that they sold him as a slave to 
some Midianites who came along about that 
time, and were going down into Egypt. 
These Midianites took Joseph, and made him 
trudge along beside one of the camels all the 
way to Egypt, and there they sold him as a 
slave. 

Then what do you think those bad brothers 

134 


Joseph 135 

of Joseph*® did? They had taken off his 
pretty coat before they sold him. Now they 
took the coat and dipped it in blood, and 
when they went back to their father they 
told him they had found it along the road. 
Poor old Jacob believed that some lion or 
bear had killed Joseph, and mourned for 
him as though he were dead. 

After Joseph reached Egypt we hear noth' 
ing but good about him. God sometimes 
sends trouble to us to bring out the good 
that is in us. If Joseph had stayed in the 
land of Canaan all his life, the pet of his 
father, he would very likely have amounted 
to nothing. He would have been selfish and 
conceited all his days. But the trouble that 
came to him made a good man of him. 

There are several fine things about Joseph 
in Egypt. He resisted temptation. He 
knew when to say, “No.” When you are 
tempted to do wrong, say “No” and mean 
“No.” 

Some one tells of seeing a mother put her 
little boy on a street car one day, with a note 
in his pocket to give to his grandma. When 
she left him she said, “Now don’t take the 
note out of your pocket till you get to 
grandma’s.” 

There was a smart young man sitting in 
the car beside the little boy. He said to 
him: “Please let me see that note.” The 


136 For the Children’s Hour 


little boy didn’t say anything. “If you don’t 
let me see it I will make this car run away.” 
The little boy looked at him, but he held to 
the note. Then the man said: “I will give 
you one of these nice peaches if you will 
let me see it.” At last he said: “I will give 
you this whole bag of peaches if you will let 
me have one little peek.” Just then there 
was a seat vacant on the other side of the 
car, and the boy climbed down and went 
away from the man who was trying to make 
him disobey his mother. There was another 
man on the other side who had heard it all. 
He put his hand on the little boy’s shoulder 
and said: “Your mother ought to be very 
proud of a boy who can resist temptation.” 

Another fine thing about Joseph was that 
he always made the best of everything. He 
was shut up in prison for years, the best 
years of his life, and all because he had tried 
to do the right thing. But while he was in 
prison he set out to make other people happy 
and to do as much good as he could. 

Some of the very finest stories in our lan¬ 
guage were written by a man who called 
himself “O. Henry.” When he was a young 
man he was sent to prison. Many men 
would have become sour and selfish and 
wicked in prison. But he made the best of 
it and there he started to write those stories 
that made him famous. 


Joseph 137 

The best thing of all about Joseph was his 
forgiving spirit. His brothers had done him 
a great wrong. But when a chance came to 
be good to them, he forgave them for all that 
they had done. That was the finest and the 
greatest thing that Joseph ever did. He 
learned to forgive. If you want God to for¬ 
give you, you must learn to forgive others. 


XXXVIII 


Happiness 

i* And Jesus opened his mouth and taught them, saying, 
Blessed. ’ ’— Matthew v. 2. 

/ There are some parts of the Bible that 
every child who goes to Sunday school 
knows. One of these is the Beatitudes. We 
can say these verses by heart, but there are 
some of us who do not know much about 
what they mean, and the Bible can never do 
us much good till we understand it. I am 
going to try to tell you in the next few Sun¬ 
days, as best I can, what these verses mean. 

Each one of the Beatitudes begins with 
the word “blessed.” “Blessed” means happy. 
When you kneel down at night and pray 
your little prayer, “God bless daddy, and 
mother, and brothers, and sisters, and me,” 
you mean that you want God to make you 
all very happy. 

Some mothers one day took their little 
children to Jesus, and asked Him to bless 
them. There is one thing that every good 
mother wants more than anything else in 
the world for her children. She wants 
them to be happy. She works and prays and 
plans that they may be happy, and it always 
138 


Happiness 139 

makes her very sad to know that they are 
unhappy. 

Every day we live we ask God to bless us. 
Now, why do we want God to bless us? 

First w T e ask Him to bless us because with¬ 
out His blessing we can never be happy or 
successful. Once there was a young soldier 
in the army of the Duke of Wellington. He 
was a poor boy who had enlisted to fight for 
his country. He had become an officer, but 
he did not know that there was any one in 
the army who cared particularly for him. One 
day the great duke was walking about the 
camp. When he saw the young officer he 
went to him, put his hand on his shoul¬ 
der and said “I knew your father and loved 
him, and I am watching you and expect 
great things of you.” When he had gone 
the young man was very happy. He knew 
now that the Duke of Wellington was his 
friend and his future was safe. This is one 
reason why we pray for God’s blessing. We 
want His care and protection wherever we 
go. 

Then we all pray for God’s blessing be¬ 
cause it is the only happiness that is really 
worth having. I saw once a ring that a man 
had purchased. He had bought it for pure 
gold, but it was only plated. After a little 
the gold on the outside wore off and he 
found that the ring was not worth anything. 


140 For the Children’s Hour 

It was brass. There is plenty of happiness 
in the world like that ring. It looks like the 
real thing, but the trouble is that it does not 
last long. It wears off and leaves us as un¬ 
happy as we were before. The only real 
happiness is that which conies from Jesus, 
the happiness that he told about in these Be¬ 
atitudes. 

Once long, long ago there was a man who 
was very unhappy. He went everywhere 
trying to get rid of his troubles, but they 
would not leave him. At last a fairy came 
to him and put a golden key in his hand, 
and told him that every door that he un¬ 
locked with that key would bring him happi¬ 
ness. It was a wonderful key. There was 
no door that it would not open, and when¬ 
ever the man turned the key and opened a 
door, there he found happiness. So his 
troubles all left him and he became bright 
and cheerful. 

In the Beatitudes Jesus gives us a won¬ 
derful key, a key of gold, and he shows us 
eight doors that we may open with it. Be¬ 
fore long I will tell you about the first door. 


XXXIX 


The Poor in Spirit 

“Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the king¬ 
dom of heaven.”— Matthew v. 3. 

If you see a child dressed in ragged 
clothes you say that he is poor in clothes. 
If he doesn’t know how to read we say, 
“Poor child, he is poor in education.” Now 
what do you suppose Jesus means by being 
“poor in spirit”? 

First he meant gentleness. When a boy 
gets angry and loses his temper and does 
things that he ought not to do, people say, 
“See how much spirit he has.” But he 
would be a great deal better off if he did not 
have so much spirit. It is far better when 
something goes wrong to be poor in spirit, 
to be gentle. Every boy ought always to try 
to be a gentleman, and every girl ought never 
to forget to be a gentlewoman. A gentleman 
or a gentlewoman is one who is always gen¬ 
tle no matter what happens. 

Then, if you are to be poor in spirit, you 
must learn to repay an injury by a kindness. 
When someone does wrong to you what do 
you do? I know what some of you do. You 

141 


142 For the Children’s Hour 

say, “HI get even.” Then you try to think 
of some way in which you can hurt him 
worse than he hurt you. But there is a way 
that is better than that to pay him back. 
Do him a kindness. 

Once there was a man who was very harsh 
and cruel to one of his neighbors. Because 
he could not pay his rent he turned him and 
his family out in the snow on a cold day. 
The poor man’s wife took cold and died 
from the exposure. 

Some time after this the cruel landlord 
was very sick. He had been taken with a 
contagious disease. The neighbors ran away 
and left him for fear they would take the 
disease. He would have died had it not been 
for the poor man, whom he had turned out 
in the cold that winter night. When he 
heard that his old enemy was sick, he said 
to himself, “Now is my chance to get even.” 
He went to the house where the sick man 
was and took care of him till he was well. 
He repaid the injury he had suffered by be¬ 
ing forgiving and kind. 

King Saul tried to kill David. He hated 
him and made life very unhappy for him. 
At last there came a day when David might 
have killed Saul. I hope you have all read 
the story in the Old Testament. All of 
David’s men wanted him to get even, and 
kill Saul, but instead of that he forgave him. 


143 


The Poor in Spirit 

Jesus said, “If thine enemy hunger feed 
him; if he thirst give him drink.” That is 
what Jesus meant by being poor in spirit. 

Last, to be poor in spirit means to feel 
how much we need God. There are some 
people at Christmas time whom it is very 
hard to give presents to. They have every¬ 
thing. There are some people like that about 
God. They never kneel down and pray be¬ 
cause they think that they have everything, 
and do not need to ask God for anything. I 
am sorry for people like that. It is those 
who are poor in spirit, who know how very 
much they need God, whom He really blesses. 
And being poor in spirit is returning good 
for evil. I have never known people in my 
life who were so happy as those who could 
return good for evil. God always gives the 
finest and the best things in the world to 
those who are poor in spirit. 


XL 


The Mourners 

“Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be com¬ 
fort ed.”—M atthew v. 4, 

When we see people dressed in black and 
looking sad and sorrowful, it makes us very 
sorry. We know that they are mourning for 
some one who has been taken away from 
them. In the second beatitude Jesus said, 
“Blessed,” that is, “happy,” are they that 
mourn. It always seems to us that there 
cannot be very much happiness in mourn¬ 
ing, and if it had not been Jesus who spoke 
those words we would think that there must 
be some mistake. But Jesus, who knows so 
much more than we know, said it, and we 
know that it must be true. 

How does mourning bring happiness? Let 
me tell if I can, and see if we can understand 
just what this beatitude means. 

All boys and girls like candy and cake, 
but if you had nothing to eat but candy and 
cake, you would soon become very sick of it. 
We all like to have clear days, when the sun 
shines all the time and we can play. Maybe 
sometimes we have thought when the rain 
144 


The Mourners 


145 


came down and spoiled our fun, what a fine 
thing it would he to live in a place where it 
never rains. Suppose you could go to-day 
to a land where it never rains, what would 
you find there? You would find a desert. 
Nothing grows in the desert. It is sand, 
sand everywhere and no one can live in the 
desert. We must have the rain, as well as 
the sunshine, so that plants, and animals, 
and boys and girls can live. So we see it 
would not do to have all sunshine. There¬ 
fore, God gives us rain along with the rest. 

In the same way, God doesn’t give us all 
pleasure. If He did we would become like 
that desert, worthless and good-for-nothing. 
He sends us trouble and sorrow sometimes, 
to make our hearts grow. You know the 
heart must grow as well as the body and the 
mind. 

Then God sends us trouble. He makes us 
mourn, so that we can think of Him. There 
was a mother who had a little boy whom 
she loved very much. He became sick and 
died, and the poor, sad mother was heart¬ 
broken. A little while after one of her 
friends met her and said, “I am so sorry. It 
is so sad.” The mother said, “Yes, but I 
can understand it now. I didn’t think before 
about God at all. All I thought of was 
myself and having a good time. But God 
took my little boy up to live with Him. And 


146 For the Children’s Hour 


then I began to think: ‘I want to see him 
again some time. And if I am ever to see 
him, I must go up to live with God, too.’ 
And then I began to wonder whether I was 
ready to go to be with him. Now I am try¬ 
ing to live so that when the time comes there 
will be a place there for me, too, with him.” 

There is something else that we ought to 
mourn over. It is our sins. Long ago there 
was a very wicked city called Nineveh. It 
was one of the worst cities that ever was. 
At last God told one of His prophets to go 
and tell the people that, unless they re¬ 
pented, He would destroy the whole city. So 
the prophet told the people what God had 
said. They were very much afraid and 
asked the prophet what they should do, so 
that God might have mercy and save them. 
This is what he told them, “Go and put on 
mourning every one of you.” They were to 
mourn for their sins. They did as the 
prophet told them, and all went into mourn¬ 
ing, and God saved Nineveh. 

Do you know why the monks and nuns 
all wear black? It is the mourning color. 
It is not because some one has died. It is 
because of their sins. They are mourning 
for their evil deeds. 

There are two kinds of men and women 
and boys and girls. One kind, when they do 
something wrong say, “I don’t care.” They 


The Mourners 


147 


are not sorry for what they have done. They 
make God very angry. There are others, 
who, when they hav, done evil, are filled 
with sorrow, and kneel down and ask God to 
forgive them. This is what we mean by 
mourning for our sins. It is being sorry 
and asking God to forgive us, and promising 
never to do it again. 

When our loved ones die, heaven seems 
very near. As we mourn for them we seem 
to come so close to the gates that we can al¬ 
most see inside into the glory of the heavenly 
city. The first glimpse that many people 
have of God and heaven is when someone 
near and dear to them goes to heaven to live 
with God. With the sorrow there comes to 
them a great joy and they can say, “Blessed 
are they that mourn, for they shall be com¬ 
forted.” 


XLI 


Meekness 

* ‘ Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. ’ , 
—Matthew v. 5. 


Who was the meekest man? I am sure 
yon can all answer this question. It was 
Moses. He is said to have been the meekest 
man in the Bible. If you would like to know 
what meekness is there is no better way to 
find out than by reading the life of Moses. 

When Moses was a very young man he 
had an ugly temper. One day he became 
angry with another man and killed him. He 
couldn’t control his temper. For this God 
sent him away for forty years into exile. 
When he came back there was a great change 
in him. He could face all sorts of insults 
and wrongs without an angry word. He had 
learned to master his temper. 

Some one was telling of being in a black¬ 
smith’s shop one day talking to the black¬ 
smith, a big, powerful man. All at once an¬ 
other man came into the shop and began to 
abuse the blacksmith. He called him names, 
and insulted him, and dared him to fight. 
The blacksmith said not a word. Some one 
148 


Meekness 


149 


said, “Why doesn’t lie fight; is he afraid?” 
Then another man spoke, “No, he is not 
afraid. He is winning a harder battle now 
than if he were to fight that man. The 
blacksmith has a bad temper. He nsed to 
be a great fighter. He could kill that man, 
who is insulting him, if he tried. But he is 
trying to overcome his temper instead.” The 
greatest hero or heroine, boys and girls, is 
the one who fights and conquers self. That 
is what Solomon meant when he said: “Bet¬ 
ter is he that ruleth his spirit than he that 
taketh a city.” 

Alexander the Great, history tells us, con¬ 
quered with his army all the cities of the 
world, and then wept because there were 
no more worlds to conquer, and then he died 
a drunkard because he couldn’t conquer his 
appetite for drink. There are boys and girls, 
and men and women, like this king. They 
are looking out for something to conquer, 
when they ought to be looking in. There is 
plenty of evil inside everyone of us to over¬ 
come. 

This is what Jesus meant when He said, 
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit 
the earth.” The boy who is able to win the 
fight against his own temper, and his own 
bad habits, will not have much trouble in 
any other struggle that comes in life. 

Then Moses was always willing to go 


150 For the Children’s Hour 


where God wanted him to go and to be what 
God wanted him to be. 

The mothers over in northern Italy some¬ 
times tell their children about the little lame 
boy who lived long ago in the Alps. This 
boy was always thinking about how worth¬ 
less he was because he was lame, and could 
not do things that other boys did. His 
mother comforted him by telling him that 
God had work for lame boys, and if he 
watched, some day he would have a chance 
to be a hero. So he forgot about his lame¬ 
ness in hoping that he would have an oppor¬ 
tunity to do something great. Italy was at 
that time at war with France and a great 
pile of wood had been placed on a hill-top 
above the village. When the news came that 
the French were coming this pile was to be 
lighted. This would warn the people so 
that they could escape. 

One day there was a holiday. Everybody 
was in the village making merry and having 
a good time, all but the little lame boy. He 
couldn’t run and play like the rest, so he 
stayed at home. As he sat there lonely and 
sad, all at once he thought he saw a flash of 
steel. He looked again and, sure enough, 
the French soldiers were coming up the val¬ 
ley. Quickly he ran into the house and 
brought fire and started the beacon in time 
for the people to get away. But he did not 


Meekness 


151 


escape. He was killed at the first fire. But 
he had saved the village, this little lame boy, 
who thought that he could not do anything. 

When God sends some trouble to us we 
must not become impatient and angry about 
it. This little boy would never have saved 
that village if he had not been lame, and in 
the same way we will find that our troubles 
always turn out to be our blessings. 

Trouble is the training very often out of 
which God makes Hii heroes and heroines. 
I am very sure that if there were not so much 
sorrow and trouble in the world there would 
not be so many wonderful deeds of bravery 
and self-sacrifice. So let us thank God for 
everything that He sends us. 

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall in¬ 
herit the earth.” 


XLII 


Seeking the Best Things 

* f Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after 
righteousness: for they shall be filled.” 

—Matthew v. 6. 

Did yon ever know a little boy who was 
not collecting something? We saw one not 
long ago picking up something on the 
ground. He was gathering acorns. He had 
several boxes full. We asked him what he 
was going to do with them. He said, “I 
don’t know. I am just getting them.” 

Some boys collect marbles. They have 
fine collections of agates and shooters, and 
dinks. 

There are others that love to gather post¬ 
age stamps. They are always looking for 
some new kind of stamp. They have stamps 
of England, with the king’s head on them; 
and pretty, queer stamps from China and 
Japan, and from dozens of other countries 
all over the world. 

Almost every boy has a collection of some 
kind. Some one said one day, “What funny 
people boys are. They are always looking 
for something.” Well, boys are not very dif¬ 
ferent from grown-up men. Everybody is 
152 


Seeking the Best Things 153 

seeking for something in the world. There 
are some people who spend all their lives 
seeking for money. They want a great deal, 
and when they get that they will want more. 
If some one were to ask them what they 
wanted with it, they would say, “I don’t 
know. I am just getting it,” like the little 
boy who was gathering acorns. Gathering 
money never satisfies anyone. Have you 
ever taken a drink of ocean water? Per¬ 
haps when you first went bathing at Ocean 
View or Virginia Beach you swallowed a 
little of the water. You know it isn’t like 
the water we drink at home. Instead of sat¬ 
isfying our thirst, it makes us more thirsty. 
And the more we drink of it the thirstier we 
get. That is the way with the man who lives 
to make money. The more of it he gets the 
more he wants. He is never satisfied, and 
often the people who have the most are the 
most unhappy and discontented. So money 
doesn’t bring happiness. 

Then there are others who are always 
seeking pleasure. A little pleasure is a fine 
thing. But when we have too much we be¬ 
come very weary of it. Some day you are 
off on a picnic. You go to the seashore or 
the country, and you have a good time all 
day. When it is all over you think how good 
it would be if you had a picnic like that 
every day. But if you were to have one 


154 For the Children’s Hour 


every day you would soon become very tired 
of it, and want to go back to school and to 
work again. All pleasure never makes any¬ 
one happy. 

What is there that will bring us real hap¬ 
piness? In this verse Jesus tells us. It is 
righteousness. This means doing good. 

Once there was a king who had a son 
whom he loved very much. But the young 
prince had poor health. The king was very 
much worried. He knew that if anything 
were to happen to his son there would be no 
one to be king after he died. He had the 
best doctors of the realm to come and see 
him, and they did their best, but there was 
not one of them who was able to help him, 
and he grew worse and worse. At last the 
king thought that he would surely lose him. 
One day there came to the court a wise old 
man. He said to the king, “I can cure your 
son, but he must do exactly as I tell him.” 
The king was very glad and said, “If you 
will cure him, I will give you anything that 
you ask.” The old man said, “I do not care 
for any reward. I only want the prince to 
get well.” 

The old man took a piece of paper and 
wrote something on it with an invisible ink. 
He gave it to the prince and told him after 
he had gone to hold the paper up to the 
fireplace. The prince did as the wise man 


Seeking the Best Things 155 

told him. He held the paper before the fire 
and when the print became warm, the writ¬ 
ing came out so that he could read it. This 
was what was written there, “Do something 
for some one else every day you live.” The 
prince did as the wise man advised. He be¬ 
gan to think about other people instead of 
about himself, and it was not long before he 
was well and happy. 

Do you know that when you are getting 
things for yourself and doing things for 
yourself, it is not very long before you be¬ 
come very tired of it. But begin to think 
about others, and do something for some one 
else every day that you live, and it will not 
be long before you, too, will be happy. 
“Blessed are they which do hunger and 
thirst after righteousness, for they shall be 
filled.” 


XLIII 


Be Merciful 

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy / 1 
—Matthew v. 7. 

Long ago there was a slave named Andro- 
clus. This slave had a cruel master, and one 
day he ran away and hid in a cave. While 
he was in the cave a lion came toward him. 
Androclus was about to run away when he 
saw that the lion was in great distress. He 
was limping and holding up one of his paws. 
Androclus took hold of the paw and saw 
that there was a thorn in it, and the lion 
could not get it out. He cut out the thorn 
and put some ointment on the sore paw. 
After this the lion ran away to the desert 
and the slave forgot about him. 

Years after this Androclus was a slave in 
Eome. He had another cruel master. In 
those days wicked men sent their poor slaves 
to fight with the lions in the arena, to fur¬ 
nish sport for the people. Androclus had 
been condemned by his master to fight a 
great lion. He was sure he would be killed 
no matter how hard he fought, so he said 
good-bye to his friends and resolved to die 
as bravely as he could. 

156 


Be Merciful 


157 


They put him in the arena, a door was 
opened and out sprang a great African lion. 
He came with great leaps toward Androclus. 
All at once he stopped and began to lick the 
slave’s hands and show his friendliness and 
love. Instead of hurting him the lion played 
with him like a friendly dog. It was the 
same lion out of whose paw he had pulled 
the thorn. 

The emperor was there watching the 
sports that day. He had never seen anything 
like that before. He sent for Androclus, 
and when he heard the story of the thorn 
and the kindness of the slave which the lion 
had never forgotten, he gave orders to set 
both the slave and the lion free. 

Androclus was kind and merciful to the 
lion and the lion was merciful and kind to 
him. Those who are kind to others will have 
kindness shown to them. 

One way to be merciful is to be kind to 
the dumb animals. Boys are cruel often¬ 
times because they are thoughtless. They 
do not know how much it hurts or they 
would not do it. And they do not think 
how useful are the little animals and insects 
that they hurt and kill. 

One day I saw some little boys killing a 
toad. There is no other animal that is so 
valuable to a farmer as the little ugly hop-. 


158 For the Children’s Hour 


toad. It kills thousands and thousands of 
insects that destroy the plants. 

It is said that the great Duke of Welling¬ 
ton once found a very little friend of his 
crying in the garden. He stopped and asked 
him what was the matter. The little boy 
said that they were going to move the next 
day and there would be no one to take care 
of his pet toad. The Duke said, “Don’t cry 
any more. I will look after him myself.” 
So not long after the little boy received a 
letter, saying: “The Duke of Wellington is 
pleased to inform his friend William Harris 
that his toad is alive and well.” 

But it is not enough to be merciful to the 
animals. We ought to be thoughtful and 
kind to everyone and everything. 

Mr. Learmount tells of a drover who was 
coming home one night, when he heard a 
little cry. It was very late. He had six 
miles to go, and he was in a hurry. He 
stopped and listened. There was a large 
sum of money in his pocket, and he thought 
it might be a trick to rob him. But the cries 
became louder, and he turned his horse and 
followed in the direction from which they 
came. He found a little girl lying on the 
ground, who moaned and sobbed as he took 
her in his arms. He carried her home, and 
then he discovered that it was his own little 
girl. Before he went away he had promised 


Be Merciful 


159 


to bring her a doll, and she had started out 
to meet him and had become lost. He can 
never thank God enough that he was led to 
be merciful that night. 

We can be merciful with our words as 
well as our deeds. When you hear some¬ 
thing unkind and hateful about someone 
else, what do you do? Oh, I know what 
some of you do. You hurry and tell some¬ 
one else, and she tells someone, and so it 
goes on until almost everybody knows about 
it. And perhaps it was not true in the first 
place. The best thing, the merciful thing to 
do, when you hear some evil thing about 
some one you know, is to keep it to yourself 
and never tell any one. 

We have all done and said many things 
that we hope God will forgive and forget. 
If we expect Him to forgive us, we must 
show that we are worthy of forgiveness by 
showing mercy to others. 

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall 
obtain mercy.” 


XLIV 


Clean Thoughts 

11 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God . f 1 

—Matthew v. 8. 

There are several things that every well- 
bred child is taught. One is to have hands 
and face clean. Another is to keep clothes 
tidy, and another is to take good care of 
books. But there is something that is far 
more important than any of these things. 
We must also keep our hearts clean. When 
Jesus spoke of keeping the heart pure, He 
meant the thoughts. There is nothing that 
is so important for a boy or girl as to keep 
the thoughts clean. 

What do we mean by an impure heart? 
We mean boys and girls who always have 
something impure and evil in their thoughts. 

When we have dirty faces we can wash 
them with soap and water and they will be 
clean. When our clothes are soiled we can 
send them to the laundry or the cleaner. 
When our books are torn and mussed we can 
buy new ones. But when the thoughts be¬ 
come soiled it is not so easy to make them 
pure again. A few miles outside of Phila¬ 
delphia there is a very large field that is cov- 
160 


Clean Thoughts 161 

ered with little brick houses. They are so 
small that they look almost like doll houses. 
That field is a part of the filtration plant of 
the city. Every drop of water that flows into 
Philadelphia passes through there and is 
purified. It is not allowed to come into the 
city till it is clean and pure. 

In our text Jesus said that only those can 
see God who have clean thoughts. None can 
enter heaven unless they have pure hearts. 
So it is very important that we should all 
have our thoughts clean. 

Let me tell you several ways in which you 
can keep your thoughts clean. 

Be very careful about the books that you 
read. Did you ever try to pick up a piece of 
coal without soiling your fingers? You 
couldn’t do it. Wherever you touched that 
coal there was a black mark on your hand. 
You can’t read a bad book without having a 
black, unclean mark left on your thoughts. 
It is very easy to wash off the stain of the 
coal, but it is very hard to get the mark of 
the bad book off. Sometimes it stays there 
forever. 

Then be careful about what you see. I 
imagine that most all of you go to moving 
picture shows. Some of these pictures are 
very good. But there are more that are very 
bad. They leave a great big stain on the 
thoughts. 


162 For the Children’s Hour 


If one of you girls had a beautiful new 
white dress, you would be very careful where 
you walked. You would not want to fall 
down in a mud-puddle, and soil that new 
dress. God has given you clean, pure minds. 
Some of the pictures that people go to see 
are like a mud-puddle. They soil every one 
who looks at them. 

Then, third, watch your companions. 
There are some diseases that are contagious. 
If one boy has a contagious disease and an¬ 
other boy goes to play with him he will 
catch it too. There is nothing more con¬ 
tagious than unclean thoughts. One boy 
who has a dirty mind will give it to every 
other boy he plays with. So when you find 
boys and girls whose thoughts are unclean, 
stay away from them, as though they had the 
small-pox. 

We all have in our thoughts many things 
that ought not to be there. There is nothing 
that is so hard to cleanse as the thoughts. 
Jesus is the only one who can make the im¬ 
pure mind clean. Long ago King David 
prayed a little prayer that we ought all to 
pray every day, “Create within me a clean 
heart, O God, and renew a right spirit with¬ 
in me.” 

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
shall see God.” 


XLV 


Peacemakers 

tl Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called 
the children of God.”— Matthew v. 9. 

Every boy admires a soldier. This week 
when the soldiers from the fort and the sail¬ 
ors from the battleships parade through the 
streets, I know that every boy in town will 
be there to hear the bands play and to see 
the fine, straight lines of men marching. 
Most boys think what a fine thing it would 
be when they grow up to be soldiers. 

And the girls admire the soldiers, too. 
While in Lexington watching the dress pa¬ 
rade of the V. M. I. boys, some one said to 
me, “Do you know, all the girls just love 
brass buttons and a pretty uniform.” And 
we ought all to admire the soldiers. Some 
of the finest men of the nation have gone into 
the army and the navy. They are ready at 
any time to give their lives to save their 
country. 

But there is something that is finer than 
making war. Jesus tells us here what it is. 
It is making peace. The best life is not that 
of the war-maker, but that of^the peace¬ 
maker. 


163 


164 For the Children’s Hour 


We all dislike a troublemaker. There is 
a little girl whom the other children call 
“the Troublemaker.” No matter how peace¬ 
ably they are playing together, as soon as 
she appears there is always trouble. She 
sets one child against another, and before 
long there is a quarrel, and then the fun is 
over. No one likes to see her come around. 
She is a “troublemaker.” 

But every one loves a peacemaker. Some¬ 
times at sea when the ocean is rough and 
the little boats are in danger of being over¬ 
turned, they pour oil on the water. This oil 
helps to make the sea smooth and calm. 

A peacemaker is one who helps to make 
life calm and smooth for other people. There 
were two little boys who were about to have 
a fight. There were some bigger boys there 
who were urging them on. When the little 
fellows were about ready to pitch into each 
other, there came along another boy. When 
he saw what was going on, he took each of 
them by the arm and led them off and talked 
to them a moment, and before long they were 
smiling, and went off to play together as if 
nothing had happened. He was a peace¬ 
maker. I found out afterward that he was 
one of the most popular boys; in school. 
Wherever he goes he makes things smooth 
and peaceable. 

President Wilson is a peacemaker. When 


Peacemakers 


165 


this country and Mexico were about ready 
to have a fight, and other nations, like a 
lot of naughty, big boys, were urging them 
on, the President said, “Let’s talk this over,” 
and after they had had a talk there was no 
war. 

Jesus says that peacemakers shall be 
called the children of God. Whom does 
your father love best of all the children in 
the world? He loves you, doesn’t he, be¬ 
cause you are his children. Whom does God 
love best of all the people in the world. He 
loves His children. And who are God’s 
children? They are the peacemakers. So 
if you want God to love you, begin to-day to 
be a peacemaker. 


XL VI 


Persecuted for Doing Good 

“ Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteous¬ 
ness ’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ’ * 

—Matthew v. 10. 

When we do wrong we always have to 
suffer for it. Perhaps our fathers and moth¬ 
ers and teachers do not know about it, and 
they do not punish. But God always knows 
and He never forgets. For every wrong 
deed there will some day be a punishment. 

But it is not the bad people alone who 
have to suffer. Sometimes the good suffer 
because they are good. We call that kind of 
suffering persecution. Why did the people 
crucify Jesus long ago? Was it because He 
had done wrong? No, it was because He 
was good. They hated holiness, and there 
are people like them to- lay, who hate good¬ 
ness and do all that they can to make good 
people suffer. 

One of our missionaries tells of a little 
Chinese boy, fifteen years ago, when the 
Boxers were persecuting the poor Christians 
of China. The Chinese governor heard that 
this boy was a Christian. He had been at 
the mission school and had heard about 
166 


Persecuted for Doing Good 167 

Jesus and had learned to love Him. They 
sent for the boy and told him he must give 
up his Bible, and sacrifice to the heathen 
god. The boy said he was a follower of 
Jesus, and could not sacrifice to heathen 
gods. He was told that if he did not do as 
he was ordered he would be killed. The boy 
answered, “You can kill me, if you will, but 
I will never deny Jesus.” And they killed 
him. 

Jesus meant boys like that when He said, 
“Blessed are they which are persecuted for 
righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the king¬ 
dom of heaven.” 

In our country boys and girls are not 
killed for being Christians. Almost every¬ 
one honors you here if it is known you are a 
follower of Jesus. But there are ways in 
which even now we must suffer persecution. 

Sometimes when boys go away to school 
for the first time, and night comes and they 
kneel down by their beds to say their pray¬ 
ers, the others make fun of them. It is 
harder to stand ridicule than it is a blow, 
and there are some young Christians who 
give up their religion rather than hear the 
ridicule of others. I haven’t much use for 
a religion like that, have you? If it is not 
strong enough to have a little fun made of 
it, it isn’t worth much. 

The New York papers told a story last 


168 For the Children’s Hour 


summer of a boy in a northern city. He was a 
good boy. He would not do many things that 
the other boys did, things that were wrong. 
He went to church and Sunday school, and 
the Christian Endeavor Society, and the 
boys in his class in the high school made fun 
of him and his religion. There are many 
railroads running through the city where he 
lived. One day he was near one of the rail¬ 
roads when he saw a little child playing on 
the track. A train was coming and she 
would be killed. He did not hesitate a mo¬ 
ment, but jumped in front of the locomotive. 
He was killed, but the little girl was saved. 
The boys, as the paper said, had persecuted 
him because he was good, but when it came 
to the real test he was the bravest one of all. 

Remember this, if you are doing right, 
you need never fear what any one may say 
or do. When a jeweler is not sure that a 
ring is gold he tests it to see if it is pure. 
So sometimes God lets us be persecuted to 
see if we are really pure gold. 


XL VII 


God’s Day 

‘ 1 Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy .* 1 
Exonus xx. 8. 

Very often we hear children say, "I for¬ 
got.” That is one reason many of us do 
wrong. We do not mean to. We just for¬ 
get. But we ought not to forget. There 
are some things that God tells us we must 
remember. One of these is the Sabbath Day. 
He says, “Remember the Sabbath Day to 
keep it holy.” There is one day of the week 
we are to keep holy. On that day we are 
not to think about ourselves and our own 
work, but about God and others. 

When God said, “Remember,” there were 
three things about the Sabbath that He does 
not want us to forget. 

First, it is the one day of the week that 
belongs to Him. If you had a friend and he 
had seven pennies, and he were to give you 
six of them and were only to keep one for 
himself, you would think him a very gener¬ 
ous sort of a friend. Well, suppose you were 
to spend your six pennies, and then go and 
take his one and spend that, too, for your- 
169 


170 For the Children’s Hour 


self, that would be about the meanest and 
most selfish thing that you could do, 
wouldn’t it? There isn’t a boy or girl here 
who would do a thing like that to a play¬ 
mate, I am sure, but there are some of us 
who are treating God in this way. 

God gave us six days for ourselves, and 
kept only one for Himself, and there are 
plenty of boys and girls, and men and women, 
who are using their six days and then taking 
God’s day, too, for themselves. People who 
do not remember the Sabbath Day to keep 
it holy are very selfish with the good God 
who has been so generous and kind to us. 

Then God wants us to remember the Sab¬ 
bath because it is the day on which He ex¬ 
pects us to serve Him. 

A boy said to me once, “I don’t like Sun¬ 
day. It is so long and there is nothing to do 
but go to Sunday school and church. I am 
always glad when it is over.” 

The reason Sunday seems so long and we 
are discontented all the day, is because we 
are thinking about what we cannot do on 
that day. There are, of course, many things 
that we cannot do on Sunday that we do on 
other days, but there are, too, many things 
that we can do, and if we will think about 
them and then go and do them, the day will 
not seem long. 

Our fathers and mothers worry about us 


171 


God’s Day 

every day that we live, for we give them, 
much to be troubled about. It would be a 
fine thing if, on Sundays, we could all be so 
good that they would not need to think about 
us at all. That would mean that mother 
would have a day of rest. 

And there is another thing we can do. 
There is a good man who works very hard 
every day. He is so busy that he has little 
time during the week to think of anything 
but his big business. But when Sunday 
comes he forgets his business and spends the 
whole day thinking about other things. If 
there is some one who is sick and suffering, 
or in need or trouble, he tries, on that day, 
to visit him and help him. We can do all 
that. We can all begin now and try on Sun¬ 
days to be of some help and service to some¬ 
one besides ourselves. That is what Jesus 
did. It is the way to make Sunday the very 
best day of the whole week. 

Third, God wants us to remember the 
Sabbath Day because He remembers it, and 
He blesses those who keep it holy. 

A little over a year ago one of the big 
railroads of this country built the biggest 
and most powerful engine in the world. It 
has twenty-four drive wheels. When it was 
finished the company wanted a name for it. 
Whom do you think they named it after? 
After the president of the road, or one of 


172 For the Children’s Hour 


the big directors? No. They called it the 
“Mat H. Shay,” after one of the modest en¬ 
gineers of the line. Let me tell you why they 
did it. A long time ago Mr. Shay, after 
being a fireman for a number of years, be¬ 
came engineer on one of the fast passenger 
trains. It was a fine position and he re¬ 
ceived a big salary. About thirty-five years 
ago he was converted and decided that he 
ought not to work on Sundays. So he quiet¬ 
ly went to the superintendent and told him 
that he had joined the church and couldn’t 
go out any more on Sunday runs. He thought 
that he would rather work in the foundry 
for a dollar a day than break the Sabbath. 

The superintendent did not discharge him, 
but took him off the fine passenger engine 
and put him on a dirty freight engine with a 
much smaller salary. Mr. Shay did not com¬ 
plain. He worked on the freight engine for 
years and then they gave him a passenger en¬ 
gine that did not run on Sundays. 

Last year when the railroad wanted to 
name their big engine after the finest man 
in the employment of the company, they 
picked out the man who was willing to give 
up his fine position rather than break the 
Sabbath. 

God made the Sabbath to be a holy-day. 
It is quite the fashion nowadays to change 
it into a holiday. There is only a difference 


173 


God’s Day 

of one small letter between the words “holy- 
day” and “holiday.” But in their meaning 
there is all the difference between obeying 
God and dishonoring Him. 

God said, “Them that honor Me I will 
honor.” If we hope to have God honor and 
bless us, we must begin by honoring Him 
and His day. 

There are many lessons that you will all 
need to learn and to remember, but there 
are few things in life that will bring you 
more joy all your days than simple obedi¬ 
ence to these words, “Remember the Sab¬ 
bath Day to keep it holy.” 


XLVIII 


The Red, White and Blue 

“Honor to whom honor is due.”— Romans xiii. 7. 

Everywhere we go these days we see the 
American flag. We love it because it stands 
for our country. There are three colors in 
the flag, red, white and blue, and I am going 
to try to tell you what those colors mean, 
so that you will better know what the flag 
stands for. 

First there is the red. Bed stands for 
courage. It is bravery. A brave man is one 
who is willing to sacrifice himself for others. 
One of the men in the navy who was on the 
same ship with Admiral Dewey at Manila, 
was telling of his bravery during the battle. 
While the fight was going on, Dewey stood 
on the bridge of the Olympia, with the shot 
and shell flying about him, fanning himself 
with a palm-leaf fan. He was no more afraid 
than if he had been at an afternoon tea. 

Boys sometimes think what a fine thing 
it would be to join the army, or the navy, 
and show their courage, but we can all be 
brave, even if we cannot go and fight. Cour¬ 
age is making sacrifices for others. There 
174 


The Bed, White and Blue 175 

was a little boy not long ago who had been 
planning for a birthday party. He had in¬ 
vited his little friends and made all his ar¬ 
rangements to have a fine time. A day or 
two before they were to come a woman next 
door became very ill. He knew that the noise 
of the children would disturb the sick lady, 
so he gave up his party without a word. He 
was a brave little fellow, to be willing to 
sacrifice his pleasure for the comfort of 
some one else. Red stands for courage. Let 
us all try to be brave. 

The second color is white. White stands 
for purity. The whitest thing that we know 
is the snow. It is white because it is pure. 
The least speck of dirt will soil the purity 
of the snow. 

Every morning I see little girls going by 
to school. Their dresses are so clean and 
white in the morning, but many of them are 
soiled before night. We cannot always keep 
our clothes from being soiled, but there is 
one thing we can all do. We can keep our 
hearts clean. 

David said, “O Lord, create within me a 
clean heart.” We ought to pray that prayer 
every day that we live. God can help us to 
keep our hearts pure and clean. The stars 
on the flag are all white. You know now 
what the white stands for. It is for purity. 


176 For the Children’s Hour 


If you want to be a good American and be 
loyal to your flag you must be pure. 

The third color in the flag is blue. Blue 
stands for loyalty. Sometimes we hear it 
said of a person, “He is as true as steel.” 
That is loyalty. 

During our Revolutionary War, Lord 
Tarleton, the British commander, was very 
anxious to capture a certain American offi¬ 
cer, who had done many brave deeds. They 
could not catch him. Finally they found 
his little boy and brought him in before 
General Tarleton. He asked him if he know 
where his father was. The boy said, “Yes, 
I know, but I cannot tell you.” He was told 
that he must tell or he would be killed. The 
little boy said, “You can kill me if you want 
to, but you can’t make me tell.” And they 
killed him. That boy was true as steel; he 
was loyal to his father. I wouldn’t give 
much for a boy who wouldn’t be true to his 
mother and sisters, or his friends. 

We are reading wonderful stories of brave 
men and women these days. One of the 
bravest men who lived during the last cen¬ 
tury was General Gordon, of the British 
army. He was always true as steel to the 
things that he believed were right. When¬ 
ever he found a poor boy, who had no home, 
he cared for him and sent him somewhere 
where he could grow to be a useful man. He 


The Red, White and Blue 177 

had a little map that he carried everywhere 
with him. There were many pins sticking 
in it. Someone asked him why he stuck 
those pins in the map. He said, “They are 
my boys.” He never forgot his boys. And 
he never forgot God. 

Every morning, soon after dawn, when 
the orders for the day had been issued, there 
was a little time of quiet. Outside the door 
of General Gordon’s tent there hung a hand¬ 
kerchief. While that handkerchief was 
there everyone knew that the General was 
not to be disturbed. He was at prayer. That 
is the sort of boys and girls the nation needs, 
those who are true to Jesus Christ. 

When you see the flags waving stop and 
think what those colors stand for. The red 
is for courage, the right kind of courage. 
The white is for purity of thought and word 
and deed. And the blue is for loyalty al¬ 
ways to God and to country. 


Christmas Gifts 

“God so loved that He gave.”—J ohn iii. 16. 


God loved the world so much that He gave 
Jesus to save the world. So when Christ¬ 
mas comes and we celebrate the birth of 
Jesus, that which we ought to think about 
most is the love of God to us, and our love to 
others. 

Most of us hang up our stockings the 
night before Christmas. There was once a 
little girl who woke up one Christmas morn¬ 
ing and found her stocking filled with good 
things. She had great fun taking them out 
and looking at them one by one. At last, 
when she had seen everything her mother 
said: “Mary, there is one thing in that 
stocking yet, the best gift of all.” 

So Mary took the stocking and put her 
hand down to the end of it, but there was 
nothing there. She turned it inside out, but 
it was empty. So she said to her mother, 
“I can’t find anything more.” Her mother 
said: “Didn’t you know that that stocking 
was full of love?” That was the best gift of 
all. This is what makes Christmas bright 
178 


Christmas Gifts 179 

and happy. It is the love that comes with 
everything. 

Not only must we have love with all our 
gifts if they are truly Christmas gifts, hut 
we must also have common sense with them. 

Did you ever hear the little fairy story of 
the two little girls? The little one was cry¬ 
ing and the older girl was trying to comfort 
her. She offered her her dolls, and her lit¬ 
tle bed, and her blocks, but the little one 
kept on crying all the harder. Everything 
that was given her she would put into her 
mouth. 

About that time a fairy came along. When 
she heard the baby crying she stopped and 
asked what was the matter. The sister said, 
“I have offered her everything that I have, 
but she will not stop. She just cries and 
cries.” “Maybe,” said the fairy, “she is 
hungry.” So she took a piece of bread from 
her pocket and gave it to the baby, and she 
stopped crying, and before long was laugh¬ 
ing and crowing. 

“Remember,” said the fairy, as she went 
away, “that blocks and dolls will never make 
a baby happy if she is hungry.” 

When we try to make others happy with 
our gifts let us remember to give them what 
they need and what will make them happy. 

And we ought not to forget at Christmas 


180 For the Children’s Hour 


that we must give a gift to Jesus. It is His 
birthday, and we ought not to forget Him. 
The Bible tells us that there were three wise 
men who came to worship the infant Jesus. 
Henry van Dyke tells the story of a fourth 
wise man who started out with the rest to 
bring his jewels to Jesus, but while they 
were on the way to Bethlehem they found a 
wounded man along the wayside. He 
stopped to take care of him, and when he 
started on again it was too late to find Jesus. 
He went back to his home and lived there 
for thirty-three years, helping the sick and 
the poor and the needy. When he was quite 
an old man he heard that the enemies of 
Jesus were plotting to kill Him. So he set 
out for Jerusalem to rescue Him if he could. 
He arrived on the very day that Jesus was 
crucified. In the crowd he saw a wicked 
man beating a poor slave girl. He had one 
jewel left and he took it and bought the slave 
girl from her master. 

While Jesus was being crucified a great 
earthquake shook the city. A tile fell from 
a roof and struck the old man on the head 
and felled him to the earth. As he lay dy¬ 
ing the slave girl who was sitting beside him, 
heard him say: “Not so, Lord, when saw I 
thee hungry, or sick, or in prison”? And 
then there came a voice from heaven: “Inas¬ 
much as ye have done it unto one of the least 


Christmas Gifts 181 

of these my brethren, ye have done it unto 
Me.” 

The fourth wise man had loved others, 
and in loving them he had loved and helped 
Jesus. 

A lady who spent several years in a great 
city in Europe says that she was walking 
through the street the afternoon before 
Christmas, when she spied three little girls 
looking into a beautiful shop-window. The 
window had been arranged to represent the 
scene in Bethlehem when Jesus was born. 
There was the Holy Family, with Mary and 
Joseph, and the Child Jesus. The sheep and 
the oxen were standing around. Before the 
infant Jesus the wise men were kneeling, 
while the shepherds were standing in the 
background, and above them the angels were 
hovering. It was a lovely picture, and two 
of the little girls were telling the other about 
it. As the lady came near she saw that the 
third little girl was blind, and the others 
were trying to tell her of what they saw. As 
they told her she clasped her hands together 
and said, “Isn’t it beautiful?” 

Remember, boys and girls, there are many 
children who have never heard of Jesus and 
the blessed message of Christmas. There 
could be no finer gift for Jesus to-day than 
to help make it possible for them to hear 
about Him. 


L 


The Coming of Jesus 

“I will come again.”—J ohn xiv. 3. 

Boys and girls are saying to-day, “Three 
more days and then Christmas.” The chil¬ 
dren and most of the grown-up people, too, 
have been looking forward to next Satur¬ 
day. We all love Christmas because of the 
surprises that come with the day. And 
while we are thinking about these things we 
must not forget the greatest surprise and 
the greatest gift of all, the gift of Jesus to 
the world. 

Jesus came to the earth as a little child 
and lived here for thirty-three years and 
went away. Before He went He said that 
He would come back, and be here always. 
Now how does Jesus come? The book of 
Revelation says that He is walking around 
among the churches seeing what people are 
doing. But some one says to me, “How can 
Jesus be here on the earth? I have looked 
and looked and I have never seen Him any¬ 
where.” But that is only because we have 
not looked in the right place. 

There was once a king who wanted very 
182 


183 


The Coining to Jesus 

much to know what his people were think¬ 
ing and talking about when he was not 
around. But how was he to find out? If 
they saw him coming they would be on their 
good behavior, and he would never know. 
So this is what he did. He disguised him¬ 
self. He put on the old clothes of a work¬ 
man, and let his beard grow, and wore an old 
hat, and a pair of worn-out shoes. Then he 
could go through the streets and hear what 
the people said, and they would not know 
that the king was listening. Some of the 
people, as he went around, were very kind to 
him, and there were others who were rude 
and mean. 

Some time passed and one day all the peo¬ 
ple were invited to come to the palace and 
see the king. They came, and the palace 
door opened, and he came out. He was not 
dressed in his royal robes, but in the poor 
old clothes that he had worn when he went 
among the people. Then they knew it was 
the king who had been going about among 
them, and those who had been kind to him 
were very glad, and those who had been rude 
and unkind were ashamed and afraid. 

That is what Jesus said that He would do. 
And that is what He is doing now. He is 
walking about among us hearing what we 
say and seeing what we do. 

There is a lovely little Christmas story 


184 For the Children’s Hour 


which I wish you would all try to remember. 

Once there was a poor shoemaker named 
Martin. He lived in a great city far away 
across the sea. Martin was a good man and 
loved Jesus, and had often thought how 
much he would like to have Him come into 
his house. The night before Christmas Mar¬ 
tin dreamed that he heard a voice say, “Mar¬ 
tin, look to-morrow on the streets, for I am 
coming.” 

When morning came he got up and said 
his prayers, and went into his little shop to 
begin work. Then he thought of the voice 
and began to look out on the streets for the 
coming of Jesus. All that he could see was 
a poor man shoveling snow, who was so fee¬ 
ble and cold that he could hardly move. 
Martin said to himself, “While I am waiting 
for the Lord to come, I’ll make the old man 
a cup of warm tea.” 

So he did, and after the old laborer had 
refreshed himself Martin set to work to look 
for the Lord again. 

Then he saw a poor woman trying to keep 
a little child warm with an old ragged shawl. 
He called them in and gave them something 
to eat and made them warm by his fire. 

When they had gone, he worked a little 
while, till he thought it was about time for 
the Lord to come, so he went out into the 
street again to look. 


185 


The Coining to Jesus 

Nearby, there was an old apple woman, 
and there was a bad boy who was trying to 
steal her apples, and the old woman was 
crying and struggling with the boy. 

Martin rushed out and caught the boy and 
talked to him till he begged the old woman’s 
forgiveness. 

By and by night came. It was time for 
him to go to bed. “Christmas is past and 
the Lord hasn’t come,” Martin thought to 
himself. He sat down to read his Bible. 
While he was reading he fell asleep, for he 
was very tired. As he slept he dreamed that 
he heard the voice again, “Martin, did you 
not know me when I came?” And Martin 
said, “Who?” And the voice said, “I.” Then 
he saw the face of the old man shoveling 
snow, and the voice said, “This is I.” Then 
came the poor woman and the little child, 
and the voice said, “This is I,” and last came 
the old apple woman and the boy, and the 
voice said, “This is I.” 

Martin woke up and wondered what it all 
meant. Then his eyes fell on the page he 
had been reading, and this is what he saw, 
“I was hungry and ye gave me meat; I was 
thirsty and ye gave me drink; I was a stran¬ 
ger and ye took me in; inasmuch as ye did 
it to these, ye did it to me.” 

This is the way that Jesus comes. Let us, 
like Martin, be on the lookout for Him. 


LI 


Forget-me-nots 

11 Giving thanks always for all things unto God and 
the Father. ’ ’— Ephesians v. 20. 

This is the last Sunday of the year, when 
we ought to think seriously about the twelve 
months that are past. We cannot think of 
them without being thankful to God for all 
that He has done for us. How many good 
things we have had and how many good 
times have been ours in the past year. We 
couldn’t begin to count them if we wanted 
to, and we have God to thank for them all. 

There was a teacher once who asked her 
class who gave them the bread that they had 
for their dinner. They all said, “My moth¬ 
er.” “And w T ho gave it to your mother?” 
“The baker.” “And who gave it to the 
baker?” “The miller.” “And who gave it 
to the miller?” “The farmer.” “And who 
gave it to the farmer?” “The ground.” 
“And who gave it to the ground?” “God.” 

Yes, God gave us the food that we eat and 
everything else that we have to make us 
happy. Not very long ago I saw a poor 
woman who was not able to move a single 
muscle of her body. She lies all the day 
186 


18? 


JForgef-me-nofs 

Stretched out on a bed and has to be fed like 
a little child. And she has been lying that 
way for twelve years. When we see some 1 
one like that, and then think how strong and 
active and healthy we are, we ought to be 
very thankful to God, for our health comes 
from Him. 

When you were sick last year, who made 
you well? You say, “The doctor came and 
gave me some medicine and before long I 
was well again.” But where did the doctor 
get the medicine? It came from the drug 
store. And where did it come from before 
that? It came from a plant that grows in 
the ground. And who made it grow? God. 
God gave us our bread, and our health, and 
everything that we have. And we sometimes 
forget to thank Him for them. 

The day before Christmas the postman 
rings your bell and hands you a package 
some one has sent you for a Christmas gift. 
Now what do you do? Do you thank him 
for bringing it and let it go at that? No, 
indeed! You look inside and see who sent 
it, and then you thank the person who gave 
it. 

The trouble with many of us is, that we 
thank the people who bring the gifts and 
we forget to look inside and see who sent 
them. That is the reason we do not thank 
God more. 


188 For the Children’s Hour 

In the spring’, when the flowers are bloom¬ 
ing, the mothers of Germany tell their chil¬ 
dren a little story of one of the flowers that 
we all know. Long, long ago there was a 
poor musician who loved a maiden. But 
she was the daughter of a nobleman and he 
was only a poor musician, and he was told 
that he could never marry her till he had 
won riches and fame. So he went away to a 
distant land to try to become great so that 
he could win her. After a few years he had 
both riches and fame, and came back and 
claimed his bride. One evening they were 
walking along the riverside when he saw a 
bunch of lovely little flowers growing close 
to the water’s edge. He reached over to 
pluck them for her, and as he did so his foot 
slipped and he fell into the river. The cur¬ 
rent was very swift and he was carried 
away, but before he sank he threw the bunch 
of flowers he had plucked to the land, crying 
as he did so, “Forget-me-not.” Ever since 
that day, so the story goes, that little flower, 
which before was called the “Mouse’s Ear,” 
because it looks so much like the ear of a 
mouse, has been called the “Forget-me-Not.” 

To everyone who listens that little flower 
says, “Forget-me-not,” and to everyone who 
thinks to-day of the blessings of the year 
that is ending, God is saying, “Give thanks 
for all things unto God and the Father.” 


LII 


The Man Who Didn’t Keep His 
Promise to Himself 

“He answered and said, I go, sir, and went not.” 

—Matthew xxi. 30. 

Here Jesus tells us about a man who had 
two sons. One day he told them to go and 
work in the garden. One of them said, “All 
right, father, I will go.” Then he went off 
and forgot all about it, and did something 
else. 

The other boy said, “I won’t.” But after 
his father had gone he begun to think that 
it was a very unkind way to treat a good fa¬ 
ther, who had done so much for him, so he 
went. 

The first of these two boys made a prom¬ 
ise and did not keep it. There are three 
kinds of broken promises. There are the 
promises that we make to God. We call 
these promises vows. One day there was a 
sick man in a hospital. He was very much 
frightened, for he did not know whether 
he was going to get well or not. So he 
promised God that if He would make him 
189 


190 For the Children’s Hour 


well that he would live a good life, and go 
to church every Sunday. God answered his 
prayer. He became entirely well, and went 
home from the hospital, and then he forgot 
all about the vow that he had made to God. 
It is a very wicked and dangerous thing to 
make a promise to God and not keep it. 

Second, there is the promise that we make 
to another person, and do not keep. A man 
told me once that he had made a promise to 
his mother long ago that he would never 
touch any kind of intoxicating liquor, and 
all his life long he had kept that promise. 
That kind of a promise is a pledge. 

Most of us would not break our vows to 
God. We are afraid to do that, and we do 
not often break our pledges to others, but 
we think that it is all right to break the 
promises that we make to ourselves. 

We call a promise that we make to our¬ 
selves a resolution. We hear people say 
that they are making good resolutions for 
the New Year. That means that they are 
promising themselves that they will do bet¬ 
ter this coming year than they did last year. 
There are good people who promise them¬ 
selves a great many fine things on the first 
of January, and then forget them all before 
the first of February. They break their 
promises to themselves, and that is wrong, 
just as it is wrong to break the vow we make 


His Promise to Himself 191 

to God, or the pledge we give to someone 
else. 

Here are one or two good promises to 
make to ourselves at the beginning of the 
year. 

First, let us resolve that we will be Chris¬ 
tians all the year through. If we read the 
Bible, and study the life of Jesus, and try 
to do what He would have us do, there will 
be no trouble about our Christian lives this 
year. One of the best things we can do is to 
resolve that we will read the Bible every day 
that we live. What would you think of a 
ship captain who started out to sail down 
this coast without a chart? Before long his 
ship would be like that one we saw on the 
bar not long ago, fast on the sand. If we go 
astray this year it will be because we have 
not taken the chart along. So let us resolve 
that we will read it every day. 

Another thing, let us resolve that we will 
do with our might whatever we find to do. 

There was once a workman in a shop who 
was making a long iron bolt. He spent 
much labor and time over it, making it per¬ 
fect, and one of the other workmen laughed 
at him. “What is the use,” he said, “of 
being so particular? You do not get any 
more for it.” But the workman did his best 
and made the bolt as well as he could. That 
bolt was used to couple the central span of 


192 For the Children’s Hour 


a great bridge. Years after the army of his 
country was crossing that bridge. There 
was a tremendous strain upon it, and it 
would have fallen and lives would have been 
lost if that bolt had not been perfect. It was 
the carefulness of that workman that saved 
the army that day. 

I knew a boy who went to school and 
neglected his mathematics. He could have 
done well, but he did not try. A few years 
later he had the chance to get a fine posi¬ 
tion, but when he tried for it, they found 
* that he was deficient in his mathematics. 
Anything that is worth doing is worth doing 
well, and it would be a splendid thing if we 
would all make a promise to ourselves, that 
we will do our very best this year in every¬ 
thing that is given us to do. 


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